First Round

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP)- Apparently, it takes Kansas awhile to get going in the NCAA tournament.

One year after surviving a scare against 16th-seeded Holy Cross, Kansas held on to beat No. 15 seed Utah State, 64-61, Thursday night at the West Regional.

The second-seeded Jayhawks (26-7) withstood two 3-point tries by Utah State in the final 10 seconds and moved on to the second round to play 10th-seeded Arizona State, which beat Memphis 84-71.

"In the back of everybody's mind, you realize if you lose, you're done," Kansas forward Nick Collison said. "But we weren't really scared, we didn't really panic. We felt Utah State was a good team. We're not really ashamed of the game."

The Jayhawks questioned their seeding after winning the Big 12 regular-season title, but got more than just a tune up from Utah State (24-9).

They found a way to win, though- a late 7-0 run finally provided enough breathing room, but just barely.

"We thought we were going to win," said Desmond Penigar, who scored 25 points for the Aggies. "We planned it right, we watched film on 'em and we knew what we had to do to win the game. We didn't want to come into the tournament and just show up and be one of the games for Kansas to move on."

Keith Langford scored 22 points and Collison had 18 for the Jayhawks, who reached the Final Four last season after rallying to beat Holy Cross in the first round.

They never trailed in this one and even led by 13 in the first half, but weren't able to shake Utah State. The Aggies closed within four at halftime and twice got within a point in the second half.

"I think that would have really helped us if we could have gotten up a point or two," Utah State coach Stew Morrill said. "It might have made it a little tougher on them."

Langford had two baskets in a 6-0 run that gave Kansas a 42-35 lead after Utah State cut it to 36-35 on a 3-pointer by Toraino Johnson.

Trailing 42-35, the Aggies scored six straight to again get within a point. But Collison scored inside on a pass from Jeff Graves, then assisted on a basket by Langford that pushed the lead to 46-41.

Utah State got within two points five times in the final 10 � minutes, the last time at 55-53 on a drive by Mark Brown with 3:53 left. That's when Langford converted a three-point play, Collison scored inside and Kirk Hinrich hit a layup off a turnover, giving Kansas a 62-53 lead with 2:35 left.

But Utah State didn't go away. Brown made a 3-pointer to make it 62-58, then Penigar hit one with 47.2 seconds left to make it 64-61.

After a Kansas turnover, Utah State called timeout with 10.3 seconds remaining. Penigar missed a 3-pointer from the top of the key and, after a scramble, Cardell Butler missed another 3 as the buzzer sounded.

"We just couldn't grab the ball," Collison said. "It was bouncing around like a pinball. I'm not going to lie, I was holding my breath on that last one."

The Jayhawks appeared to have things in hand after a 13-5 run made the score 26-13 with 7:23 left before halftime. But Utah State's zone defense slowed the Jayhawks in the closing minutes of the half. Kansas coach Roy Williams said he considered himself lucky.

"It was just a weird ending," he said. "At the same time, I've seen a lot of teams, including Kansas last year, go pretty far when they struggled to win the first game."

Second Round

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP)- The Kansas Jayhawks are off and running again, all the way West and into the round of 16 for the third straight year.

Seniors Nick Collison and Kirk Hinrich sparked the Jayhawks right from the opening tipoff Saturday night in a 108-76 win over Arizona State, an offensive showcase light years removed from their first-round struggles against Utah State.

Second-seeded Kansas (27-7), a Final Four team a year ago, heads to the West Regional semifinals in Anaheim, Calif., against either Duke or Central Michigan.

Collison scored 22 points and had 10 rebounds, and Hinrich scored 24 as the Jayhawks topped 100 points for just the fifth time in the school's 98 NCAA tournament games.

The Jayhawks are in the round of 16 for the ninth time in coach Roy Williams' 15 seasons.

Jason Braxton scored 17 for the 10th-seeded Sun Devils (20-11), who were in their first NCAA tournament since 1995.

Williams had challenged Hinrich and the entire team after their tough 64-61 win over Utah State.

The Big 12 regular-season champions wasted little time returning to form as one of the nation's highest-scoring offenses. Kansas did just about anything and everything it wanted, shooting 68 percent and hitting 14 consecutive shots during a second half run that made what was already a rout look even worse.

It was easy pickings from the start.

Collison scored on a layup for the game's first points, Hinnch swished a 3-pomter from the right corner for a 5-0 lead and the Jayhawks never looked back. Collison dunked, converted a three-point play and started a three-way give-and-go with Aaron Miles and Keith Langford that Langford finished with a tomahawk dunk for a 16-4 lead.

Hinrich swished another 3-pointer from the corner and a jumper by Miles made it 34-12 with 6:37 left in the half.

The Sun Devils, meanwhile, didn't show any of the offensive form they had in a 84-71 first round win over Memphis. Arizona State started four seniors but the experienced lineup looked shaky. The Sun Devils fired up several airballs and had nearly as many turnovers (eight) as field goals (11) in the first half.

Freshman Ike Diogu, the Pac 10 freshman of the year, held his own on the offensive end against Collison with 10 points in the first half. But he was no match defensively for Kansas' savvy senior, the Big 12's career scoring and rebounds leader.

In the second half, Arizona State missed four of its first five shots, before cutting it to 49-37 on Tommy Smith's dunk. But Collison dunked on the other end, hit a jumper and the Jayhawks had the lead back up to 60-41 with 15 minutes to play

That's when frustration finally set in for Arizona State Coach Rob Evans was hit with a technical for complaining about the officiating.

Regional Semifinal

The Dallas Morning News

ANAHEIM, Calif.- Nick Collison went it alone Thursday night. The best player in the country, according to Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, was enough for Kansas (video).

Lacking the usual assistance of guard Kirk Hinrich, Collison carried Kansas to a 69-65 victory over Duke in an NCAA West semifinal game at the Arrowhead Pond. Collison had a career-high 33 points and 19 rebounds, the last of which stopped Duke's last gasp rally.

"A fantastic game," said Kansas coach Roy Williams, who beat Krzyzewski for the first time in four tries. �It's the kind of game where you feel fortunate to win."

Duke threw so many extra defenders at Collision that it was almost funny," he said.

Collison thought Duke was trying to make him turn passive. It did not work.

Collison had several stretches in which he singlehandedly kept struggling Kansas in the game.

Duke opened a 44-36 lead early in the second half. Collison kept Kansas (28-7) from falling out of sight. He scored six of the Jayhawks' next 11 points on a putback, a running left-handed hook and a short jumper to wipe out Duke's lead.

Collison was even better late in the game. He had Kansas' final six rebounds and performed the Herculean feat of outscoring the entire Duke team, 12-8, during a seven-minute stretch late in the game.

Seven points came with Hinrich on the bench because of foul trouble. Hinrich, who averaged 17.5 points during the regular season, went more than 27 minutes before his first score and finished with four points.

"I was trying to be aggressive and make plays the whole game," Collison said. "When Kirk went out, I really didn't try to do anything different."

The game was tied at 35 at the half. There were four more ties in the second half before Collison roared away, pulling the Jayhawks with him in his draft.

Duke (26-7) saw the downside of its late-season affection for the perimeter shot.

The Blue Devils had a 38.5 shooting percentage and scored only six point in the final 4:48. Freshman J.J. Redick, 15-for-31 on 3-pointers during the five-game winning streak, was 1-for-11 on threes and 2-for-16 overall.

Duke stayed with the small lineup and let-it-fly offense that has served it well during postseason play.

The Blue Devils made five of their first seven three-point tries to go ahead, 22-13. Kansas could not aim its defense at one shooter. Five Duke players made a 3-pointer during that stretch.

Collison kept Kansas in the game during Duke's early storm of 3-pointers. Duke's small lineup had no one who could effectively defend Collison.

Regional Final

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP)- Nick Collison did it one game, Kirk Hinrich the next. That's how it works at Kansas, and the payoff is a trip to the Final Four.

Hinrich went from his least productive performance of the season to one of his best, scoring 28 points and blocking a three-point attempt by Jason Gardner in the final seconds Saturday night as the second-seeded Jayhawks beat top-seeded Arizona 78-75 at the Arrowhead Pond to win the NCAA West Regional (video).

"He struggled three or four games this season and the next game, he was sensational," Kansas coach Roy Williams said. "He was sensational today. He always competes."

The victory was the 1,800th for Kansas- third-most in NCAA history. The Jayhawks will play in their 12th Final Four, the fourth in Roy Williams' 15 years as coach.

Williams has a 417-100 career record and his .807 winning percentage is the best among active coaches, but he's never won a national championship.

This team appears poised and ready.

"I feel awfully good right now," Williams said.

So much for that anticipated Arizona-Kentucky matchup in the national semifinals at New Orleans. Instead, the Jayhawks (29-7) will face Marquette at the Superdome. The third-seeded Golden Eagles (27-5) stunned No. 1 Kentucky 83-69 earlier Saturday to win the Midwest Regional.

The Jayhawks blew leads of 16 points in the first half and 14 in the second, but did enough in the end to win.

"It's starting to sink in," said Luke Walton, one of Arizona's three senior starters.

"I know it's going to be the last time in the locker room with the coaches, the players. That's the hardest part, knowing that it's all over and we're not going to have another shot at it."

Hinrich was a miserable 1 of 9 from the field and scored just two points in Kansas' 69-65 victory over Duke in the regional semifinals.

So Collison took over, scoring a career-high 33 points and grabbing 19 rebounds in a performance Williams called the best he's ever had by one of his players in a big game.

The Wildcats made life difficult for Collison in this game, holding him to eight points and nine rebounds. So Hinrich took over.

"I think I just knew how big a game this was," the 6-foot-4 senior said. "I don't remember ever being so anxious and giddy before a game. I knew against Duke, I wasn't the aggressor. I got frustrated early and forced some shots.

�Today, I just wanted to come out strong. If I was going to go down, I was going to go down firing."

Hinrich fell one point shy of his career high. He shot 10 of 23, including 6 of 17 from three-point range, and added five rebounds, five assists, two steals and two blocks. The second block won't soon be forgotten in Kansas.

After the Jayhawks committed a shot-clock violation, the Wildcats took possession with 7.1 seconds remaining. Gardner let fly from about 25 feet away, but Hinrich slapped the ball away. Walton grabbed it and fed the ball back to Gardner in the left corner, but his second attempt to tie the game missed as time expired, setting off a wild Kansas celebration.

"I knew he was going to shoot it. I was able to get my hand up and get a piece of it," Hinrich said. "I think my height helped."

Gardner said he had a good look at the second attempt, but it just didn't go down.

The loss was a tough one for Arizona and 68-year-old Hall of Fame coach Lute Olson, who remained stuck at 499 wins in his 20 seasons as leader of the Wildcats.

Jeff Graves had 13 points and 15 rebounds, and Keith Langford also scored 13 points for Kansas. Collison sat out key minutes down the stretch with four fouls, but his second basket of the game with 1:27 left gave Kansas a 76-73 lead.

Langford made a free throw with 4:31 remaining to cap a 69-69 tie and put the-Jayhawks ahead for good, and his runner with 50.6 seconds to go completed the scoring.

The sophomore guard then drew a charging foul on Walton with 43.4 seconds left, setting up the final sequence.

"I'm going to have to live with it," Walton said. "I probably should have shot the three."

Gardner led the Wildcats (28-4) with 23 points. Walton had 18 points, 10 rebounds and six assists, and Rick Anderson and Hassan Adams scored 11.

It was the last game for seniors Gardner, Walton and Anderson. But Hinrich and Collison- key seniors on the other side- get to play on.

Arizona outscored Kansas 18-4 to finish the first half and start the second, erasing all but two points of a 16 point deficit.

It was reminiscent of a game between the teams Jan. 25, when the Wildcats trailed by 20 before outscoring Kansas 67-30 to finish the game for a 91-74 victory that snapped the Jayhawks' 23-game home-court winning streak.

Just when it appeared the Wildcats were in control. Kansas went on a 14-2 run capped by Bryant Nash's breakaway dunk to go ahead 56-42.

That only seemed to stir up the Wildcats, who scored the game's next 16 points- eight by Gardner- in just over three minutes for a two-point lead with 10:32 remaining. Neither team led by more than four after that.

Hinrich was called for traveling in the final minute of the first half, prompting an angry display from the normally mild-mannered Williams. First, he tore off his jacket and threw it on a chair behind the Kansas bench. Then, he stomped toward the official who called the violation, voicing his disapproval, but it was to no avail.

The game was delayed for five minutes because the scoreboard wasn't working. The lights came on shortly after the opening tip. Olson and Williams exchanged a few words- and chuckles- in front of the scorer's table during the delay.

National Semifinal

By Lindsey Willhite

Chicago Daily Herald Sports Writer

NEW ORLEANS- The rest of the world will remember Saturday's first Final Four semifinal for Kansas' breathtaking fast break and cold-blooded efficiency.

Marquette will think of that initially.

Then the Golden Eagles will recall how, in the school's first Final Four appearance since 1977, they laid a not-so-golden egg.

On the strength of a stunning first half that nearly found No. 6 Kansas rewriting a generous portion of the Final Four record book, the Jayhawks cruised into their first NCAA championship game since 1991 with a 94-61 whipping of No. 9 Marquette before 54,432 fans at the Louisiana Superdome.

Kansas' 33-point victory margin was the fourth-largest in the Final Four's 65-year history and the game wasn't that close.

"Needless to say, the first 25 to 30 minutes were sensational," said Kansas coach Roy Williams. "I feel very, very fortunate and very, very pleased."

"First of all, (Kansas) played a great, great basketball game in every facet," said Marquette coach Tom Crean. "We contributed to it by not... we did not have a day like this all year.�

"We missed so many easy shots around the basket, we could never get that little run where we could get that confidence we needed."

Meanwhile, Kansas ripped off the mother of all runs during the middle portion of the game.

Starting with Kirk Hinrich's 3-pointer at the 13:15 mark of the first half, the Jayhawks blistered Marquette 63-22 over the next 18-plus minutes to build a 77-34 advantage with 14:51 to go.

Not only did the Jayhawks score quickly and furiously, they did it without regard for what Marquette did on its offensive end.

Kansas pushed the ball on the break on Marquette's 6 first-half turnovers. It pushed the ball whenever it rebounded one of Marquette's 32 first-half missed shots. It pushed the ball on Marquette's rare makes.

Perimeter blurs Keith Langford, Aaron Miles and Kirk Hinrich delivered on the other end- almost always with more than 25 seconds left on the 35-second shot clock

On five occasions in the first half, Kansas answered a Marquette basket with one of its own within nine seconds.

"You know, every team is capable of running," said Langford, who led all scorers with 23 points. "It�s not just running faster than anyone, it's just the fact we're going to continue to do it.

"I think a couple of possessions they kind of celebrated their score (while) we were on the other end attacking and scoring. We just kept pushing."

And Marquette just kept panicking.

"We were paralyzed a few times," Crean said. "We were standing around and not getting back."

"We didn't do a good job of communicating and getting back on defense like we did all week in practice,� said Marquette sophomore point guard Travis Diener. "They made us look pretty bad."

Diener, who had been Marquette's rock throughout its remarkable NCAA run, might have looked worst of all. After committing just 4 turnovers in his last four games, Diener committed turnovers on Marquette's first two possessions.

His day didn't get any better as he finished with 5 points on 1-of-11 shooting while committing a career-high 8 turnovers.

Junior guard Dwyane Wade led Marquette with 19 points, but he forced several contorted shots during Kansas' dizzying run in a vain attempt to keep his team in contact.

"I feel like we didn't get into the flow on offense as good and that was partly our fault," Wade said. "We didn't really listen to Travis when he was railing the plays. Guys were out of position. Kansas is a great team, but I think we were out of position more and wound up having to force a shot up."

Meanwhile, the Jayhawks kept their feet all the way down on the gas pedal until Williams removed his final starter with 3:41 to go and Kansas ahead 92-52.

Did they ever start to feel sorry for Marquette?

"Nope," said Langford.

"Nope," said senior forward Nick Collison, who scored 12 points, grabbed 15 rebounds and triggered KU's break.

Williams probably would have said, "Nope," too. With 5:30 to go and Kansas up by nearly 40, he was still up on the sidelines and giving the officials grief for missing a goaltending call.

"I think the biggest thing for us was we kept attacking,� Williams said. "That was something we talked about all the time throughout the course of the entire season- and we emphasized it in the locker room before the game today."

Now Williams, in his fourth Final Four, gets another chance to win his first national championship.

Wade, for one, thinks Williams will be wearing a net around his neck at about 10:45 p.m. Monday.

"If they go out and play the way they did tonight," Wade said, "I don't think they can be stopped."

National Championship Game

Sports Illustrated

April 14, 2003

Alexander Wolff

To be golf coach was best. At Syracuse in the early 1970s, back when the athletic department could justify the salary only by piling additional duties on a graduate assistant basketball coach, Jim Boeheim preferred coaching golf for one reason: No one knew the results unless he phoned them in. Imagine a Final Four that worked that way. No Nantz and Packer; no scrum of coaches in a hotel lobby down the street; no one knowing what happened unless Jim Boeheim called with the news. "That was a lot more fun," Boeheim said last week, recalling his golf-coaching days. "Everyone thought we were undefeated."

No one had that misapprehension about the two Syracuse teams Boeheim took to the Final Four before this year, especially the one he brought to New Orleans in 1987. The world knows that the Orangemen had been on the business end of Keith Smart's shot with four seconds to play, the jumper that won Indiana an NCAA title. It took years for Boeheim to get over the pain of that loss, and the game tape remains the only one he has never watched. "I wish we'd have won that game, but would my world really be different if that shot hadn't gone in?" he asks. "I don't think so. I never thought Marv Levy would have been a better coach if he'd won one of those Super Bowls."

Boeheim was no better a coach by the end of this season, even after squeezing all he could out of a one-year wonder of a freshman named Carmelo Anthony, including Monday night's 81-78 defeat of Kansas in the Superdome for the NCAA title. He might, however, have been a different man. According to his wife, Juli, he had never before told one of his players "I love you," as he did to Anthony, a 6'8" forward, after the Orangemen qualified for New Orleans with their East Regional defeat of Oklahoma.

And what's not to love? From his sweet dish to center Craig Forth for the first basket of the title game, to his graceful pirouette while calling timeout in the final minute as Syracuse clung to a lead, to his 20 points, 10 rebounds and six other assists, Anthony embodied the credo tattooed to his right biceps, LIVE NOW/DIE LATER. "Ain't nothing left for him to do," said Anthony's brother, Justus, in the postgame tumult.

Nor, it seems, is there much left for his coach to accomplish after 27 years. "There's four seconds he has to clean up," Kueth Duany, Syracuse's lone senior regular, said of Boeheim last week, before Anthony and fellow freshman Gerry McNamara delivered the title by playing with more poise than the Jayhawks' senior leaders, Nick Collison and Kirk Hinrich. "Those are the four seconds we're trying to get for him." And get them these unlikely champions did, replacing four final seconds with a Final Four first (video).

Much of the Syracuse narrative leading up to Monday night had been delivered by television, and for almost a quarter century that story line had been, alternately, boon and bane. During the 1980s and into the '90s, ESPN's images of a full Carrier Dome served as recruiting infomercials, particularly effective in Southern California, where impressionable high school stars, home from practice and waiting for dinner, would tune in. Many wound up making the surprising decision to go where winters are long and the local industry is air conditioning. At the same time, sideline cutaways always seemed to show Boeheim in full caterwaul, and to judge by his expression and body language, he liked neither people nor life, much less basketball, thereby establishing his reputation as a grouch and a yokel. (He didn't do much to dispel it. Asked once why he so rarely took his teams to tournaments in Hawaii, he said with a harrumph, "Ah, Hawaii. Syracuse in July.") Boeheim had also mined New York City for recruits, like the play-maker Dwayne (Pearl) Washington, maestro of those teams in the early '80s. But the next great Gothamite point guard to come along, Kenny Anderson, chose Georgia Tech. A comment attributed to a member of Anderson's family may be apocryphal, but it had the ring of an epitaph: "That city's cold, and that man is, too."

Still, Boeheim carried on. He earned the respect of other coaches with his 20-win seasons- 25 in all- and his feel for the game, especially in learning and incorporating its many styles. "He's very dangerous once they throw it up, because he sees the game globally," says Dave Gavitt, the founding commissioner of the Big East, the conference that gave Boeheim the national stage upon which he seemed so uncomfortable, especially alongside such outsized coaching personalities as John Thompson, Lou Carnesecca and Rollie Massimino. But, as Gavitt says, "Jimmy's a very provincial guy, and all of a sudden his world was national." And although no Division I coach has been in the same place longer than Boeheim, other schools never really tried to hire him away. He attracted plenty of talented players, yet among NBA scouts they had a reputation for not always developing and not always practicing hard. Syracuse, you could say, was the UCLA of the East.

Then Jules met Jim. With a gesture as old-fashioned as a blue blazer or a 2-3 zone, Boeheim caught the eye of a stunning Kentuckian some 20 years younger, Juli Greene. At a Derby party in Louisville in 1995, she had returned from the ladies' room to find her spot on the sofa taken. Boeheim created a place for her and pulled up a chair. They fell into conversation, then a game of backgammon; he rebooked his flight to stay another day, and she taught him how to dance the two-step. A year and a half later, after he had dropped to one knee in the laundry room of his Syracuse home to ask if she would marry "this old stiff," she did.

Boeheim had grown up in the upstate New York town of Lyons, the son of an undertaker. The family home doubled as a funeral parlor, and little Jimmy quickly learned that it was good business to subordinate one's emotions to those of the family's customers. The critical point here is that Boeheim wasn't emotionally one-dimensional all those years; he was just raised to be opaque with his feelings. "He's basically a very shy guy who's finally reached a comfort level," Gavitt says.

"Everybody says that Jim has changed so much, but he really hasn't," Juli says. "What the public is starting to see now is the only Jim I've ever known."

Boeheim remains friendly with his first wife, Elaine, and their adopted daughter, Elizabeth, 17, who live in Syracuse not far from Jim and Juli and their three kids, Jimmy, 4, and three-year-old twins Jamie (a girl) and Jack. Nearly every day the two boys push aside the dining-room furniture for a hoops game of their own devising, Starting Lineup, in which one plays for Syracuse and the other for some NBA team. Their 58-year-old dad may play a little defense or even cheer one of the boys' moves. But he's never a coach. "I'm always the coach at home," says Juli, a remark that's worth reading at more than one level.

A year ago Boeheim underwent treatment for prostate cancer, the disease that had taken his father's life, but long before that he was involved in the Coaches vs. Cancer charity. It's a cause that fits perfectly with Juli's Bluegrass hostessing skills, and together the Boeheims help stage the black-tie Basket Ball, an annual gala that accounts for Syracuse's easily leading all schools in raising funds for that organization. Only a few weeks ago he and the team taped a promotional spot for this year's event, which is set for April 26 and will feature the Temptations. Boeheim opens the promo with a spiel, then adds some Motown choreography. His players, unprepared for a Temps-style spin move, dissolved into such hysterics that the director couldn't use the take, and this upset Boeheim, who insists that his best move wound up on the cutting-room floor. "I used to tell him that there'd be no name on his tombstone, just a caricature of him with his glasses hanging on his nose," says Gavitt, mimicking the Boeheimian sourpuss expression with arms imploringly outstretched.

The current Orange players, of course, know only one Boeheim, and it's not the misanthrope of Big Mondays past. "I heard he used to throw chairs in the locker room," says Forth. "But he hasn't thrown one since I got here. And when he does get on you, it gets you motivated. You want to win for him- sometimes just to prove him wrong, but sometimes just to make him happy."

The team made him happiest with how it played the 2-3 zone, which is nothing like that Mickey Mouse setup you'll recall from CYO days. Today Syracuse looks for long-armed, long-bodied players with quickness and skills- such as 6'8" sophomore forward Hakim Warrick- and those physiques lend themselves to an effective 2-3.

In the East Regional final the 2-3 so flummoxed Oklahoma that the Sooners had more turnovers (19) than baskets (18). In last Saturday's 95-84 semifinal defeat of Texas, the top of the zone dared T.J. Ford to shoot, and when the Longhorns' point guard penetrated, the back line cheated forward enough to keep him from probing deep into the lane. "I played a lot of zone in high school, but there's no zone like this," says Warrick, who made the crucial block of Michael Lee's last-second three-point attempt in Monday's final. "You'd never think there's this much to it. It's like a 400-level class."

Because zones are so rare these days, most teams don't have highly refined offenses to run against them. "You have to make shots against a zone," says Gavitt. "And to get good shots, you have to pass the ball with sonic imagination. Kids today can do just about everything better than in the old days except passing. So if you throw a zone out there and it's active and working, a lot of teams can't make you pay."

Moreover, the zone may surrender shots, but often in unaccustomed places, like the midrange. And while so many teams avoid playing the 2-3 for fear of giving up the three-point shot, Syracuse will sometimes extend on the wings, inviting opponents to prove that they can consistently get the ball in the foul circle and sink that simpler, but less damaging, two-point shot or make a high-low pass for a layup.

Yet even his great tactical creation has brought Boeheim as much grief as praise. "I'm still doing the same things," he says. "We just have better players this year. It's funny: If we lose, it's always that we shouldn't be playing the zone. You lose with a man-to-man, it's somehow better."

The Orange sometimes even traps out of its zone, nowhere more effectively than in the "short corner," the horse latitudes where the foul lane meets the baseline. Opponents who pick up their dribble there may find themselves looking beseechingly at a pom-pom girl, the only friendly face they can find. Eventually, opposing players get what Duany calls "the bug-eyed look...like they're lost and confused."

That described Syracuse a year ago, when discipline problems and dissension tore the team apart. Boeheim pronounced it his most difficult season as a coach, quite apart from his bout with cancer. The departure of three players created room for a scorer and a floor leader, roles that Anthony and McNamara, respectively, have assumed. Given their transforming influence on the team, those two aren't freshmen so much as refreshmen. "I've never seen Jim have so much fun with a team," says Juli. "Last year the phone would ring, and you'd know it wasn't good. This year those calls never came."

Not that the season passed without its dodgy moment. Credit Boeheim with a deft bit of peacemaking in January, shortly after the return of first-year guard Billy Edelin, who had been suspended for 12 games by the NCAA for playing in an unsanctioned summer league. Edelin feared that McNamara had claimed his minutes. Anthony didn't think McNamara was getting him the ball enough, and he was bugged that the press was making such a big deal over Edelin's arrival. Boeheim spoke with all three individually, then gathered them in his office to bring them together. "After that meeting our roles were clear," says Edelin.

Anthony and McNamara combined for 38 points and nine three-pointers against Kansas, including six three-pointers by McNamara in the first half. "We tried not to double off McNamara," Collison said after the title game, "but when Anthony gets the ball, everyone's got to give help."

"They make a mistake here and there," Boeheim said of his freshmen after they beat Texas, "but these kids are young enough to think they can do anything, and I'm not going to tell them differently."

McNamara will remain an Orangeman for three more years. The only question surrounding Anthony's future, after the NBA-style clear-outs with which he dominated both games last week to win the Most Outstanding Player award, is whether he may now be threatening LeBron James's status as the likely No. 1 pick in the June draft. For all the skills he showcased over the weekend- feathering jumpers, plucking rebounds, finding teammates and, yes, laying Temps-style spin moves on Kansas forward Keith Langford- the lasting image of Anthony may be one that captured his unburdened attitude. Late in the first half he stood in front of the scorer's table, waiting to check in, smiling and waving two towels as the Syracuse lead crested at 18. Coaches are from Earth; players are from Pluto.

As for the Mars-and-Venus Department, there's this to report from Monday night: Before One Shining Moment could be piped through the Superdome's PA. system, Boeheim turned to his wife, said "Let's go home" and tried to lead her into the tunnel. To which Juli replied, "This is my favorite part. We can't go yet." And he stayed.

In the end, even as Carmelo Anthony departs, isn't that the epitaph Jim Boeheim deserves? HE STAYED. Indeed, Syracuse's only unexpected phone call this season will be the call in which Boeheim phones in the score to the fates.

Syracuse 81, Kansas 78. Four seconds, freshly laundered. Ah, New Orleans: Syracuse in April.