The way Jim Valvano stared cancer in the face and laughed at it, even as it ravaged his body, rightly has made him one of the most inspirational figures in sports history. He knew the disease was killing him, but he wasn’t about to let it kill his sense of humor, his spirit, his lust for life.

Jimmy V was such a special guy that his brother, ESPN’s Bob Valvano, tends to be known by many as the late Jimmy V’s brother. Yet, Bob is one of the brightest minds in sports in his own right. He coached basketball for 19 seasons, his teams setting three-point shooting records at various levels, but his best work has been done behind a microphone.

For the past 10 years, Valvano has worked for ESPN, doing highly intelligent radio talk shows and working games. Based in Louisville, he never quite has received the credit he deserves because the shadow of his late, great brother so dominates the Valvano name.

Those Kansas fans who spotted Bob on press row after Mario Chalmers hit the big shot might have mistaken Valvano for a big fan of the Jayhawks, based on his celebratory reaction. In reality, Valvano was rooting the way all great commentators root. He was rooting for himself.

In one of the great calls of all-time, Valvano predicted on the ESPN pregame show that the score at the end of regulation would be 65-65 and that Kansas would win by seven points in overtime. As it turned out, Chalmers’ three-pointer evened the score, 63-63, and Kansas won it in overtime, 75-68, a margin of seven points.

In the wake of the outcome, Valvano was like most objective parties in that he was happy for Bill Self for winning his first national championship and felt John Calipari’s pain for falling just short of doing the same.

Before that, Valvano was happy for himself and the system he uses to forecast games.

“When Chalmers made that last shot, I know there’s no cheering in the press box, but I was high-fiving total strangers,” Valvano said.

He has been using his system for the past 10 years.

“It gives you a pretty good idea who’s going to win the game,” Valvano said. “It’s predicted the winner correctly three of the last four years. And the scores are always very close. For the first time in 10 years it predicted an overtime game.”

That’s how close Kansas and Memphis were. That’s how strong a runner-up the Tigers made.

So what is the system?

“You take one team’s offense, add it to the other team’s defense, points per game, and divide that by two,” Valvano explained. “Do that for the other team, too. That gives you what each team should score in each game. The only thing subjectively you look at is if one team has a tougher schedule than the other. Where the dice come in is you take that number – let’s say your team is supposed to score 70 points – divide it by 3.5, because that’s an average dice roll. So if your team is supposed to score 70 points, you get 20 dice rolls. So you roll 20 dice and add them up, and that’s your point total. I did it and it came out 65-65. The overtime is just a roll of the dice because there is no system that can predict that. So it’s just three dice for each team. And Kansas won that by seven. Bada bing, bada boom.”