University Of Kansas

Bill Self of Kansas is a Final Four first-timer and he intends to act like one. He's ready for anything San Antonio throws at him. In fact, there isn't a dumb question he isn't ready to answer. "So you could put me answering questions in a dark room with the bright light shining on me for eight hours a day and I'd still love every second of it," Self said Monday in a conference call of Final Four coaches.

SAN ANTONIO -- Kansas guard Rodrick Stewart can't play in the NCAA title game tonight after breaking a kneecap during the team's public shoot-around Friday, but he will be on the bench in his warmups. "You prepare your whole life for this situation," the transfer from USC said. "It was tough yesterday. Right with about one minute left in the game, I wanted to be on the court for just one second. "The fans started chanting my name, wanting me out there.

SAN ANTONIO -- Maybe no one ever wanted to believe Memphis could end up as one of the great teams in NCAA history. The Memphis moons were lunar-eclipsed in this Final Four, engulfed by titans of basketball industry. UCLA, North Carolina and Kansas had combined for 17 national titles to none for the Tigers. "Three blue bloods and a blue collar," Coach John Calipari joked.

SAN ANTONIO -- Players and coaches at the Final Four wear white hats and black hats. They are painted in broad brush strokes. Kansas wears the white hat in tonight's NCAA title game, and Memphis wears the black. Never mind that Kansas recruited Memphis stars Chris Douglas-Roberts and Derrick Rose too. Or that Kansas guard Brandon Rush went to a prep school in North Carolina, just like a handful of Memphis players. "I feel people judge us, and don't really know us," Douglas-Roberts said.

SAN ANTONIO -- The game was over, Memphis had won on a Monday, freshman Derrick Rose was going to be the star and Coach John Calipari was finally going to get his due. Cue the confetti and the CBS theme music. But then it wasn't over. In what will be remembered in Kansas lore as Mario's moon shot, Jayhawks junior guard Mario Chalmers landed a three-point basket with 2.1 seconds left to send a great NCAA championship game into overtime. "I knew it was going in when it left my hand," he said.

SAN ANTONIO -- The shot was off-balance, but Mario Chalmers' aim was true. Rock, shock, Jayhawk. It wasn't over, but it might as well have been. Chalmers' desperate three-point basket with 2.1 seconds left in regulation forced Memphis to overtime Monday, and a Kansas team that outlasted some of the best this NCAA tournament had to offer won the national title, 75-68. "It'll probably be the biggest shot ever made in Kansas history," Coach Bill Self said.

SAN ANTONIO -- That's the thing about one shining moment. Somewhere else, there is darkness. Somewhere else, there is chill. After one shining moment carried Kansas to a breathless national championship that will live forever, somewhere else kids were crying. Somewhere else, kids were biting the bottoms of their jerseys, hiding their heads in their towels, throwing punches through the confetti. One shining moment gave Kansas a 75-68 overtime victory in the national title game Monday night.

It turns out that Brandon Rush had some unfinished business back home. Back where his brothers had run into trouble. Back where people had labeled him a failure. "I had a lot of pressure on me," he said. The Rush family qualifies as basketball royalty in this part of the country, three brothers who rank among the most celebrated schoolboy players in Kansas City history. But it has been a star-crossed bloodline.

If you like a coach who has an eye -- and, apparently, an ear -- for detail, Ben Howland is your man. He took time during a news conference Friday to silence a couple of loud talkers just outside the curtain where UCLA's coach and his starting five were trying to talk about today's West Regional final between the second-seeded Bruins and top-seeded Kansas.

Kansas, take us to your leader. You say there isn't one? The Jayhawks team taking on UCLA today at HP Pavilion in the West Regional final is trying to win a national title without a lead vocalist. Kansas is rock-chalked with backup singers, though, and all of them can carry a tune. Ask UCLA who its leaders are and two names roll off the tongue: Arron Afflalo and Darren Collison. Ask Kansas the same question and someone unfurls a scroll. The short answer is that it depends on what day it is.