LJWorld.com

San Antonio — When legacies are on the line, it is no longer just a game. It becomes something bigger than the moment, something you can feel but not touch. And it makes even breathing difficult.

Which is why a national championship game that seemed over was not really over. Memphis had made almost all of its free throws since the Sweet 16 until it came time to clinch a title with a nine-point lead and just two minutes to play against Kansas at the Alamodome.

A turnover and four missed foul shots - three by star Chris Douglas-Roberts and one by Derrick Rose, who looked as if he had won the game for Memphis with one of the great eight-minute runs in championship history when he scored 16 of his team's 18 points and assisted on the other basket - negated all the Tigers had done to get back in the game and seemingly take control. Then, when they had a three-point lead with just five seconds left, they tried to foul Sherron Collins, but it was not called. So Collins pitched the ball to Mario Chalmers, who got a great look at a three to tie with 2.1 seconds left in regulation. It was perfect and sent the game careening into overtime.

"We were fouling there," Memphis coach John Calipari said. "Our man pushed (Collins) to the floor."

But when Calipari really wanted a foul called on his team, there was no call.

Memphis, so sure it had the title, had let KU off the hook. And had nothing left to give. Calipari, just seconds away from a title and perhaps a season just five points away from 40-0, had to watch as his team took bad shots that missed badly, forgot how to defend and shot 1-for-8 in OT. KU was not going to give it away. The Jayhawks made their foul shots in OT and won the title, 75-68, in overtime.

The inventor of the game, James Naismith, the first coach at Kansas, is buried not far from Phog Allen Fieldhouse, named in honor of the man who coached the Jayhawks' first national champions in 1952. There was the near-miss, triple-overtime loss to North Carolina that Wilt Chamberlain took with him to his grave. There was the Larry Brown-Danny Manning team that came from nowhere to steal the 1988 championship for Oklahoma in one of the great one-game coaching clinics in championship history. And all those four other finals appearances that ended in almost.

And 20 years after that improbable championship, KU had another that, in this one game, was even more improbable and not because this KU team was not most deserving. It surely was that, but this game really did seem lost.

"I thought we were national champions," Calipari said. "That's the great thing about college basketball . . . Then, it's OT and it's on again. You're supposed to win that game."

Only they didn't. Kansas took it away.

Kansas (37-3) outshot 39 of 40 teams. Only USC shot better than the Jayhawks in a season that saw them lose those games by a combined 13 points, all on the road in the Big 12.

They already have that eerie and unforgettable Rock Chalk Jayhawk, the best chant in sports, all of those fans swaying in Allen as KU leads big and it's getting late. Now, they have this.

When the buzzer sounded, KU coach Bill Self just leaned back in his chair, almost in disbelief at what he had just seen.