On a day when Kansas University basketball fans paid homage to Kirk Hinrich and Nick Collison — and deservedly so — I couldn’t help but wonder what might have been.

Drew Gooden could have been out there on the Allen Fieldhouse floor, too, following Saturday afternoon’s 79-61 victory over Oklahoma State, probably thanking everyone except the reindeer ranchers in his mother’s native Finland.

In fact, if the loquacious Gooden hadn’t turned pro after his junior year, Saturday’s postgame speeches might have lasted through supper.

“It would have been a lot of fun,” Collison said of the potential of a triumvirate, “but it would have taken some time.”

Since the speeches were scheduled in alphabetical order, Hinrich certainly would have grown more and more antsy waiting for Gooden to finish because, as he confessed to the postgame throng, “I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous in my life.”

What a difference a year makes. Collison and Hinrich opted to use their last year of collegiate eligibility and graduate this May, while Gooden, who came to Mount Oread at the same time as the two Iowans, now is earning a cool $3 million or so a year in the NBA.

Did you see Gooden on TV Friday night? The Orlando Magic, his new team, were playing the New York Knicks on ESPN, and I did a double-take when I saw Gooden.

He looked like a Disney World gnome with a pituitary problem.

Gooden’s head was shaved, and he was wearing a thin, dark headband. Worse, his legs were covered with dark tube socks up to his knees.

The only weirder sight I saw in the last 24 hours was Roy Williams wearing a bow tie during the first half of Saturday’s game — a planned occurrence in deference to a man named Jim Phelan, who has coached in the college ranks since the Spanish-American War.

To me, Williams resembled a cross between Charles Osgood and Mr. Chips, and the KU coach wisely discarded the uncustomary cravat for more conventional, conservative muted-gold neckwear at halftime.

Williams didn’t think he looked like Osgood or Mr. Chips.

“I looked like an 11-year-old kid,” Williams said. “I thought if I changed neckties we’d stop making silly plays like we did at the end of the first half, which shows you how silly I am.”

Actually, Williams looked a lot less silly in that bow tie than Gooden did in an apparent attempt to emulate Scot Pollard, another former Jayhawk famous in the NBA for his kooky hairdos.

“Drew has more freedom now,” Collison said. “I don’t think coach Williams would let him do that. I think shaving his head is something he felt he had to do because his hair is going back too far.”

A receding hairline is one thing, but the cranial adornment?

“I didn’t like that look,” KU sophomore Keith Langford said. “That Nick Van Exel headband … I don’t know what’s up with that.”

You and I both know Gooden would have loved to have been in Allen Fieldhouse Saturday afternoon, his parents on hand, the Crimson Girls strewing flowers on the court and the fans cheering him like he was the president.

“Drew told me every time he sees a (KU) game (on television),” Williams said, “he wishes he was running through that tunnel.”

Where was Drew Gooden Saturday afternoon? Probably in Cleveland. The Magic will meet the Cavaliers this afternoon in Gund Arena.

I certainly don’t want to take anything away from Collison and Hinrich. Saturday was their day. Still, it would have been nice if Gooden could have shared it with them.

Life, though, is about choices, and wherever you go, well, that’s where you are. If you’re in Cleveland, you’re in Cleveland, and you make the best of it.

Money doesn’t whisper, you know. Money talks. Money cannot buy, however, what Collison and Hinrich experienced on Saturday afternoon.

That was priceless.