I wonder how many times over the weekend Mario Chalmers nailed his famous three-point goal against Memphis.

While channel-flipping, I saw Chalmers do it twice on CBSC, the cable outlet that was telecasting an NCAA Final Four retrospective. Heck, I even watched some of Kansas University’s semifinal victory over North Carolina in April at the Alamodome in San Antonio.

How often CBSC repeated those games during the weekend I have no idea, but it must have been at least a half-dozen times, which I found ironic because 20 years earlier KU fans should have been so fortunate.

After Kansas had stunned Oklahoma, 83-79, and captured the 1988 NCAA men’s basketball championship, KU boosters were clamoring for tapes of the shocker over the Sooners.

To no avail. If you hadn’t taped that game while it was in progress, you were out of luck. CBS owned the rights and wasn’t producing any tapes for sale, which, in retrospect, was probably a marketing blunder.

Now, thanks to TiVo and other recording devices, just about everybody can watch a replay. Then came the CBSC August weekend blitz, precipitated no doubt by the desperate need to fill air time.

In the ever-growing pantheon of NCAA men’s basketball championship games, the Jayhawks’ 75-68 victory over Memphis will be memorable for two occurrences – Chalmers’ game-tying three-pointer with :02 left in regulation, and the Tigers’ late gag at the free-throw line.

Interestingly, Memphis wasn’t really that bad at the charity stripe, missing seven of 19 attempts. Five years earlier, for instance, Syracuse had failed on seven of 17 free throws, yet edged Kansas, 81-78, in the NCAA title game.

Nobody talked about the Orangemen’s seven bricks, however, because they won and because Kansas was even worse – much worse, in fact. KU misfired on 18 of 30 foul shots that night in the Louisiana Superdome.

Memphis’ seven misses were magnified because four – three by Chris Douglas-Roberts – occurred in the last 75 seconds and enabled Kansas to wipe out a nine-point deficit.

In the meantime, Kansas made 14 of 15 free throws that April night. (Trivia question: Who was the only Jayhawk to miss a free throw against Memphis? Answer: Brandon Rush).

There’s an old sports adage that everything evens out over time, and the 2003 and 2008 NCAA title games are certainly evidence of that. KU lost in ’03 because of brutal free throwing and won in ’08 because of deadly foul shooting.

In the same vein, you could compare Chalmers’ three-pointer to Michael Lee’s desperation shot from beyond the arc against Syracuse. Lee’s launch was blocked by Hakim Warrick. After watching the replay of Chalmers’ rainbow twice over the weekend, I’m still not sure why it wasn’t rejected. Memphis defenders were all over him.

No matter how many replays show up on the tube, Chalmers’ shot will always go in the hole.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch just to make sure.