SAN ANTONIO Kansas associate athletic director Jim Marchiony has attended all but one Final Four since 1982, and for five years with the NCAA, he was media coordinator of the NCAA Tournament as it was morphing from an event into a spectacle.
Even so, amid the buzz and lights and music and moving parts and sheer pageantry crackling in a crowd of 68,257, he smiled and shook his head in amazement just before Kansas and Villanova tipped off in the national semifinals on Saturday night at the Alamodome.
A few feet away, with alternately radiant and serene looks on her face, sat the mother of KU sophomore Udoka Azubuike, Florence. And just how in the world was she supposed to process this?
Before late Friday night, she hadnt so much as seen her son since putting a Bible in his hands six years ago as he left Nigeria for a chance at a better life in part through this game she had never seen before her somewhat unfathomable impromptu journey from Delta, Nigeria, in the last few days.
She doesnt know anything about basketball, Azubuike said as he awaited her arrival Friday night. She really doesnt understand it.
This first glimpse had a chance to be a beautiful thing, one of the best stories of the tournament.
Only for pesky reality to get in the way.
She didnt have to know the game to know this: From virtually the second her son scored the first basket of the game, Kansas was utterly overmatched on the way to being vaporized 95-79 by Villanova which crumpled up the end of KUs season for the second time in three years.
With a preposterous hail of 3-pointers (18!), the most ever in a Final Four game, Villanova stamped an anticlimactic exclamation point on a season of wild emotional swings for Kansas.
Leaving the beholder with this: a team that properly should be remembered as both overachieving and exasperating.
If its possible to reconcile both those sentiments, coach Bill Self seemed about there after the game.
Even as he acknowledged Villanovas superiority and that it was less than the fairy tale night it might have been with Azubuikes mother on hand (not to mention Selfs own ailing father in the stands for the first time in months), Self disputed the premise that this had even really been a sour end for a team he saw come as far as any he can remember.
We did not have the perfect roster in many ways, probably, to win 31 games and win … a great league and conference tournament and get to the Final Four, in a lot of ways, Self said. And to be honest with you, it felt like today it just kind of caught up to us.
The Jayhawks had sent tremors through their fan base at times, suffering an apocalyptic three defeats at Allen Fieldhouse and the unexpected loss of presumptive star Billy Preston, navigating an obvious lack of depth and for stretches just being soft as cotton candy in the eyes of Self.
Then, shazam, Self summoned something special out of this group.
Next thing you know, theyre winning, ho-hum, their 14th straight Big 12 title and the Big 12 tournament and seizing a No. 1 seed and a favorable bracket map that placed them in Wichita and Omaha and funneled them into the instant classic against Duke last week.
In the moments after that game, an 85-81 overtime win, Self was as emotional and demonstrative as hes ever been even during a career that has included the 2008 national championship among many special moments and featured lows of first-round losses and the torture of seven losses in Elite Eight games, including the previous two years.
