Atlanta ? As tickled as Kansas is to be headed to the Georgia Dome, the Jayhawks say they’re not content just getting there.

“Our goal wasn’t to reach the Final Four,” KU junior forward Nick Collison said. “It was to win the national championship.”

Other Kansas players echoed that sentiment: Now, nothing short of the Jayhawks’ first national title since 1988  the year before Roy Williams took over as coach  will do.

“It was joy out there” celebrating the Midwest Regional championship-game win over Oregon, freshman point guard Aaron Miles said. “But we know it’s not done. We don’t want it to stop here. It feels good to be one of the four teams that can possibly win the championship, but we want to be the ones to do it.

“We want to do it for coach Williams, because of all the things people have said about him, but we also want to do it for ourselves as a team,” Miles said.

The Jayhawks will meet Maryland in a national semifinals about 7:47 p.m. Saturday.

What Kansas (33-3) did to get to Atlanta was sweep the Big 12 regular season, 16-0, and win its first two conference tournament games before being beaten in the finals by Oklahoma  another Final Four team.

Seeded No. 1 despite that loss, the Jayhawks held off Holy Cross 70-59, blew out Stanford 86-63 and scored a hard-fought 73-69 win over Illinois before running over the Ducks on Sunday.

Along the way, they weathered injury (guard Kirk Hinrich’s ankle sprain), foul trouble (Hinrich and Collison played just 37 total minutes against Illinois) and crowd hostility (Wisconsin fans have never forgiven Williams for comments they thought disparaged the Badgers’ 2000 Final Four team).

And in the end, they put to rest  for this year, anyway  Kansas’ recent reputation for underachievement in the NCAA Tournament.

“This means a lot,” said All-American forward, Drew Gooden, who had 20 rebounds against Oregon. “I knew there were a lot of doubters out there. I know people have given coach some heat in the past for not reaching goals. But coach Williams is a great coach. This is his year.

“Our year.”