Tuesday, April 8, 2008

NCAA Championship

First off, congrats to KU fans. Kansas deserved to win this game. They took advantage of some huge mental errors by Memphis and Chalmers hit a huge shot. Everyone is going to focus on FT shooting, but realistically Memphis made 3 critical mistakes in my opinion that KU took advantage of:

Mental Error #1. Dorsey committing one of the worst fouls I have ever seen for his fifth and final foul. It happened with 1:23 left in the game and Memphis up by 6. CDR had just made two FT's and Dorsey proceeds to pick up a ticky tack 5th foul, stop the clock, and put one of the better FT shooters at the line for two. You should never let the other team score points with the clock stopped.

Mental Error #2. With :16 left Memphis had stolen the rebound on a missed shot, were up by 2 points and had a 3-on-1 against Arthur. For some inexplicable reason, CDR decides to try and dunk the ball instead of backing it out. They would have been fouled regardless and would have had to make FT's, but instead of going to the line with :16 on the clock they could have run down the clock to at least :10 in my opinion and then had to make the FT's. Dozier then makes a great play to get an offensive rebound and they run 6 seconds off before Rose gets fouled. Memphis could have been looking at Rose at the FT line with :04 left. He makes one and KU has no timeouts and not enough time to run that last play to Chalmers.

Mental Error #3. Blame Calipari, his players should have known 100% to foul at the end. As a coach you make sure they know.

Overall, a great game though...I am officially a huge Derrick Rose fan...

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