Anaheim, Calif ? Roi Holladay may not be able to talk to her son in Iraq, but she knows he’s there.

Holladay and her husband, Kansas University assistant coach Joe Holladay, believe they watched their son jump out of an airplane Wednesday night on CNN.

“We’ve watched it like 20 times,” Roi Holladay said Thursday during a break in Kansas University’s game against Duke at the Pond in Anaheim, Calif. “It’s the green nightvision, and he opens the door and he’s pulling on everybody’s straps as they get ready to jump. And that’s what he does. He’s a jumpmaster.

“It looks like him: the back of his neck, the way he moves. I feel like it’s him.”

Her son, Capt. Mathew Holladay, is a squadron commander, engineer and paratrooper in the 173rd Airborne, which sent nearly 1,000 paratroopers into northern Iraq to seize an airfield in the Kurdish controlled region.

His mother last spoke to him March 18, just before fighting began in the war with Iraq.

When the fighting started, Roi Holladay was certain her son had gone in. Now she feels like it’s confirmed.

“This is exactly what I envisioned: him cleaning up an airport for bringing in heavy machinery,” she said.

The pressure involved in Kansas’ narrow 69-65 victory Thursday over Duke is nothing compared to the uncertainty surrounding her son’s situation, she said.

“I’m just so nervous,” she said, wearing a U.S. flag pin on her lapel. “I just have my moments of clarity, and I can talk just fine. Then five minutes later I just break down.”