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Summary The Kansas Jayhawks finally were able to play an up-tempo NCAA tournament game and ran by the Oregon Ducks 104-86 to earn their first final four birth since 1992-93 and 11th in school history. Nick Collison led the way for the Jayhawks with 25 points and 15 rebounds, while frontcourt mate Drew Gooden tossed in 18 points of his own and snatched an astounding 20 rebounds. Keith Langford came off the bench to score a career-high 20 points and grab 8 rebounds. Guards Kirk Hinrich and Jeff Boschee rounded out the players in double figures with 14 and 10 points, respectively. Hinrich also had 9 rebounds. Boschee hit a pair of three pointers to move past Missouri’s Clarence Gilbert as the all-time Big 12 leader in 3 point field goals. Gooden’s play throughout the tournament earned him the regional MVP award. Kansas ran its record to a nation’s best 33-3 and now prepares for a national semifinal match-up against the Maryland Terapins. Analysis Well, it doesn’t take a tremendous basketball mind to figure out how Kansas won this game. Rebounding told the whole story. Kansas led 63-34 on the backboards including 24 on the offensive end. The Ducks didn’t have any players who were both big enough and athletic enough to keep the Gooden/Collison duo off the glass. Throw in Hinrich and Langford’s work on the boards and you’ve got the makings of an absolutely dominating performance. Much of the 2nd half, Oregon employed a small, quick lineup to try and make the perimeter difficult to defend for the Jayhawks. Luke Jackson, 6-7 swingman from Oregon, was unable to use his quickness to his advantage while guarded by Collison or Gooden. Those players ability to guard Jackson allowed Roy to stay with the "normal" lineup (which made the Jayhawks bigger than the Ducks) and make rebounding very difficult on Oregon. Oregon is a great 3 point shooting team. With KU’s rebounding advantage, the Ducks needed to really shoot the ball well from behind the arc to neutralize the 2nd chance points that the Jayhawks were getting. A rotating array of defenders (started by Hinrich and Langford at the small forward, later Collison and Gooden when Oregon went small) kept Jackson from even ATTEMPTING a three point shot. Jackson was 3-7 from the floor for just 7 points, 10 below his average. Aaron Miles drew the defensive assignment on Oregon’s sophomore point guard Luke Ridnour and held him to just 9 points on 3-13 shooting from the floor. Stopping the Lukes needed to be a point of emphasis for the Jayhawks, and the kids did a great job of making every look that they got was a contested one. The match-up that ended up giving Kansas the most trouble was Freddie Jones. Several of KU’s perimeter people took turns guarding him, and no one ever really figured out a way to stop him. Jones ran, slashed, and shot his way to 32 points, but he was Oregon’s only weapon and needed much more help than he got if his team was to beat the Jayhawks. Kansas guarded the others well, isolated the damage to just Jones, and cruised to their first regional final win in almost a decade. In addition to defense, it goes without saying that a team doesn’t score 104 points without playing well on the offensive end. Kansas gave Oregon fits. The Ducks tried to switch up defenses. They used a little bit of 3/4-court pressure, zone, straight man-to-man. Nothing seemed to get KU’s offense out of sync. Kansas didn’t shoot the ball from outside particularly well and still scored in bunches. Collison and Gooden beat the slower Oregon frontcourt players down the floor for lay-ups early in the game and set the tone from the beginning. Kansas had a clear advantage on the interior in this game, and Drew and Nick made sure that the advantage was just as big on the floor as it was on paper. What we saw tonight wasn’t KU’s best game (on either end of the floor). Even so, the game they did muster was good enough to beat the Pac 10 champs by 18. Kansas’ team defense and rebounding were both terrific (see above), but there were certainly some great individual performances tonight. Nick Collison bounced back from a very poor first half against Illinois (in which he was held scoreless) to score 11 points in the 2nd half of that game. He continued on his rampage with 25 points, 15 rebounds tonight. Collison was around the basket every time a KU player took a shot. More importantly though, no Oregon player could keep Nick from getting post position on the block. Kansas could make a simple entry to Collison almost at will and usually get a good shot. Nick missed a couple easy ones and got bumped by Oregon’s bulk some, but he was the most efficient and best offensive option tonight, as evidenced by his 20 shot attempts. Drew Gooden (18 points, 20 rebounds) should be commended for letting the game come to him as much as he should for his gaudy statistical line. Gooden turned the ball over a couple of times in the first half but for the most part, he found open players and made very good decisions with the basketball. He was also a monster on the backboards (again) and played solid defense. Drew’s performance over the last two weeks was certainly more than worthy of the regional MVP award. Keith Langford might be KU’s most important player in the tournament. After lifting Kansas up with a 15 point effort to inch by Illinois, all Keith did for an encore was score 20 points, grab 8 rebounds, and hit 8 consecutive free throws down the stretch to ensure than Oregon couldn’t crawl back into it. Langford also gets play of the game honors for an AWESOME rebound dunk on a missed shot. My advice, tune into Sportscenter or find a tape of the game and check out that dunk. WOW! Other players also played well; that’s fairly obvious when a team never trails against a #2 seed, but these 3 were really, really good. I don’t think this team is going to be content with this final four appearance. I think they still have their sights set on the ultimate prize... cutting the nets down in Atlanta and giving Roy Williams his first national championship. There’s a lot of analysis I could do to preview the Maryland game. However, for once I’m going to follow Roy’s lead, and I’m not going to look ahead to the Terapins until (at least) tomorrow. Tonight, I’m going to enjoy the heck out of this one.

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Rock Chalk.... Robert