I told you so

I said I thought it might not be close...and it wasn't except for a couple of minutes in the second half. I can honestly say that the first 13 minutes of the first half were the best I've ever seen played by any college basketball team ever. And that's no exaggeration... for 13 minutes the Jayhawks were every Beaker fans' dream...an unstoppable force. Brandon Rush looked like a lottery pick...Russ Rob and Chalmers looked like the best back court in the country...Cole Aldrich out-Tyler Hansboroughed Tyler Hansborough.

Then, as if the refs had on headsets with the president of CBS in their ear, the momentum shifted. Virtually every call for the next 15 minutes went Carolina's way. Every time a Heel hit the court a whistle blew, warranted or not. To the Tar Heels' credit, they followed the flow and got themselves back in the game...kind of.

I'll admit I was nervous, but coming back from 28 points down against the best team in the country takes too much out of you, even with Roy's maddening substitution patterns. So Carolina got tired, the Jayhawks shook the nerves and once again the game was a blowout. It leaves us with questions, so of which will be answered tomorrow night, some of which we should already know the answer to.

Did Roy choke again? Of course he did. Either that or he's much cockier than I ever gave him credit for. Either way his team was laughably unprepared. My friend Steve brought this up last week, and I thought of it again last night: Everyone acted like the choking was nonsense after his National Championship. Remember that he did it with someone else's players against Bruce Weber who hardly looks like he'll ever be in that type of game again. Maybe Roy really is a choke artist...or maybe...

Is Bill Self really that good of a coach? Let's wait and see how he prepares for Memphis before we answer this one.

Is destiny real? Seriously, 20 years later...K-State in the same region...Baylor in the tourney for the first time since 88...Danny Manning on the bench...Can the curse of Larry Brown really be broken? (sidebar: Seeing Brown cheering for UNC may have upset some KU fans...I was far too elated to give a damn)

Is Cole Aldrich ever going to be that good all the time? I don't think so, but I could be wrong. It kind of reminded me of those two or three times a year the Greg Ostertag would get a fire lit under him. Not sure what fired Aldrich up, but he outplayed Hansborough for a good 10 minutes...which just seems absurd.