Final Four Fact February: San Antonio Becomes Super Mario World
One of the most iconic images of March Madness over the last 30 years or so is that of Mario Chalmers hitting a late-game 3-pointer to help Kansas to its first national championship in 20 years.
Writing completely anecdotally, I also contend Chalmers’ basket is the most Mandela Effect’d moment of recent March Madness history. I swear a random sampling of people asked about this shot would produce a majority who remember it as the game-winner — not a tying bucket that sent the National Championship Game to overtime.
Maybe I’m wrong, though I’d love your feedback in the comments.
Regardless, Mario Chalmers cemented his place in March lore as the Most Outstanding Player of the first Jayhawks title since Danny and The Miracles in 1988. The overtime title tilt — the first National Championship Game to need more than 40 minutes since Arizona-Kentucky in 1997 — put a bow on what may be the best overall NCAA Tournament of the 21st Century.
2008 was the first and still only Final Four to feature all four No. 1 seeds
Certain rules apply whenever filling out an NCAA Tournament bracket in the 21st Century: Always pick at least No. 12 seed to beat a fifth-seed, project a Big Ten or Pac-12 team to win the national championship at your own risk, and never go chalk all the way to the Final Four.
The 2008 postseason provided the lone exception to the rule, however.
The ‘08 Final Four remains today the only ever to feature four top seeds:
North Carolina emerged from the East with wins over Mount St. Mary’s and Arkansas in the opening weekend — scoring a combined 221 points in those games — and Washington State and Louisville in the second.
Kansas won the Midwest with defeats of Portland State, UNLV and Villanova all by double-digits; and then a narrow escape by 10 points against the region’s 10th seed in the Elite Eight. More on that team in a moment.
Memphis advanced to its first Final Four since 1985, avoiding a second-round ouster against Mississippi State to cruise past Michigan State and Texas in the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight.
UCLA reached its third straight Final Four under Ben Howland as the representative from the West. The Bruins held Mississippi Valley State and Texas A&M to a combined 78 points in the first two rounds, the same total they gave up to Western Kentucky in a 10-point Sweet 16 win, then romped past Xavier en route to San Antonio.
The 2008 Final Four was the first to feature two future NBA MVPs since Magic vs. Bird
The 1979 Final Four ranks among the most celebrated still to this day for showcasing basketball’s definitive rivalry of a generation, Magic Johnson vs. Larry Bird.
Michigan State vs. Indiana State set the scene for a decade when Magic’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics combined to win eight NBA Finals and the two individually claimed six Most Valuable Player awards.
Another pair of future MVPs followed Bird and Magic to the Final Four in the following half-decade: Michael Jordan with his iconic game-winner for North Carolina in 1982, Hakeem Olajuwon appearing in back-to-back Final Fours with Houston.
Nearly three decades elapsed until the Final Four featured another pair of future MVPs when, in 2008, Derrick Rose capped his sole season at Memphis with a standout NCAA Tournament and Russell Westbrook played a key role for UCLA.
Of course, the presence of two MVPs in 2008 carries a lot less historical significance than ‘79 in part because the players’ teams met in the semifinal rather than the title game. More significantly, neither Rose nor Westbrook was the star of his team.
Rose averaged a little less than 15 points per game, deferring somewhat to veteran Chris Douglas-Roberts. Westbrook was arguably the third-best player on his UCLA team: Freshman Kevin Love won Pac-10 Player of the Year and garnered All-American honors, while veteran Darren Collison filled more traditional point-guard duties.
Westbrook’s defense was integral to UCLA’s success, and he no doubt showed flashes of the playmaking that made him the NBA’s all-time leader in triple-doubles. Projecting him as a future MVP, however, would have raised eyebrows in 2008.
Rose and Westbrook claimed their MVPs in a stretch dominated by point guards, their awards in 2011 and 2017 book-ending a period when the position claimed 4-of-7 overall.
The third MVP of that era very nearly joined Rose and Westbrook in the 2008 Final Four.
Steph Curry put together one of the greatest individual runs in Tournament history
Kansas’ title drought nearly continued through 2008 thanks to Davidson, and specifically, Steph Curry. Curry played in the NCAA Tournament a year prior but bowed out in a lopsided, 1st Round loss to Maryland during which he scored a lot but took a bevy of ill-advised shots.
In his sophomore season as a Wildcat, Curry was a much more refined player. That was plainly evident in his postseason return when he lit up Gonzaga for 40 points and shot 8-of-10 from 3-point range to begin Davidson’s Elite Eight march.
Curry put together three straight games of 30-plus points and knocked down 19 3-pointers through the Sweet 16. The four triples he made in the Midwest Regional final loss to Kansas were his fewest of the 2008 Tournament.
Curry joined some of the most iconic names in basketball when he closed his Tournament with 25 against the Jayhawks, becoming just the seventh player in NCAA postseason history to put together five consecutive games of 25-plus.
The West Coast Conference sent three teams to the Dance, and only one won
Gonzaga’s 1st Round exit against Davidson contributed to a period of disappointment for the program, effectively starting the lazy and frankly inaccurate narrative of the Zags “choking” in the postseason, which persists even after the Zags have reached two Final Fours in five years.
Nevertheless, Gonzaga bowing out early fueled the anti-Zag fire. Naysayers of Gonzaga’s West Coast Conference schedule gained ammunition when Saint Mary’s, then a newcomer to the national stage under coach Randy Bennett and featuring Aussie import Patty Mills, lost in a 1st Round romp against Miami.
However, in a year that the WCC improbably sent three teams to the Big Dance, one broke through: The University of San Diego.
USD earned the WCC automatic bid that season under the most fortuitous circumstances: The conference had not yet moved its tournament to Las Vegas, instead granting hosting duties to its members on a rotating schedule. The Jenny Craig Pavilion on USD’s campus — brilliantly nicknamed The Slim Jim — was slated for 2008.
Personal sidebar, I lived just a few blocks from USD in the spring of 2008 and attending an obscene amount of Toreros basketball games, including its WCC Championship win over Gonzaga.
The Toreros landed the automatic bid in the West as the No. 13-seed and summarily knocked off UConn in overtime behind 22 points from Gyno Pomare, 18 points from Brandon Johnson, and 14 points from Rob Jones.
A few years later, Johnson was implicated in a point-shaving scandal. Jones, then a freshman, became the media darling of San Diego’s NCAA Tournament run for his most unusual backstory: His grandfather was cult leader Jim Jones.
John Calipari joined an exclusive club of coaches to take two different programs to the Final Four
After UMass bowed out of the 1996 Final Four, John Calipari embarked on a brief, ill-fated NBA coaching tenure before returning to the college game with Memphis.
Memphis cultivated an impressive tradition in the latter-half of the 20th Century with Final Four runs in 1973 — when the Tigers became an unfortunate trivia answer to the question “Against which team did Bill Walton set the Championship Game scoring record?” — and again in 1986. Penny Hardaway led then-still Memphis State to the Elite Eight in 1992 before bowing out to Great Midwest Conference rival Cincinnati.
When Penny exited for the NBA the following year, however, Memphis endured an up-and-down next seven years that trended more in the down direction once Calipari was hired in 2000.
Memphis was indeed something of a rebuilding job when Calipari arrived. Despite signing one of the most ballyhooed prospects at the turn of the millennium, Dajuan Wagner — he of the 100-point game at Camden High School — the Tigers didn’t return to the NCAA Tournament until Calipari’s third season.
By then, however, Memphis began a steady progression that reached its crescendo with its 2008 Final Four run. Calipari reaching his second Final Four as a head coach, and doing so with a second program, landed him in company with some of the sport’s all-time greats. Prior to 2008, this was the club of coaches who took two programs to the national semifinals:
Forddy Anderson (Bradley 1950 and 1954; Michigan State 1957)
Frank McGuire (St. John’s 1952; North Carolina 1957)
Jack Gardner (Kansas State 1948 and 1951; Utah 1961 and 1966)
Gene Bartow (Memphis State 1973; UCLA 1976)
Lee Rose (Charlotte 1977; Purdue 1980)
Hugh Durham (Florida State 1972; Georgia 1983)
Larry Brown (UCLA 1980; Kansas 1986 and 1988)
Lute Olson (Iowa 1980; Arizona 1988, 1994, 1997 and 2001)
Lou Henson (New Mexico State 1970; Illinois 1989)
Eddie Sutton (Arkansas 1988; Oklahoma State 1995 and 2004)
Rick Pitino (Providence 1987; Kentucky 1996 and 1997)
Roy Williams (Kansas 1991, 1993, 2002 and 2003; North Carolina 2005)
Williams, the most recent to accomplish the feat before Calipari, reached his second at North Carolina that same season. Bob Huggins was next to join the club two years later as coach at West Virginia, with Lon Kruger advancing with Oklahoma in 2016. Kelvin Sampson, who took OU to the 2002 Final Four, joined the club as Houston’s head coach in 2021.
Calipari became the first to do so at three programs, beating Pitino by a year when Kentucky advanced to the 2011 Final Four.
Billy Packer concluded his broadcast tenure in San Antonio
The late Billy Packer, who died last month, provided the soundtrack for the Final Four for decades. Packer was on the call when the Tournament last emanated from NBC airwaves and made the transition with CBS taking over broadcast rights in 1982.
Packer’s tenure came to end with the 2008 Final Four; popular speculation at the time, which came to be accepted fact for some in the 15 years since is that CBS forced Packer out. A not-uncommon belief was that the former Wake Forest guard and longtime color commentator’s fated was sealed when, 13 minutes into the national semifinal between Kansas and North Carolina, Packer declared, “This game is OVAH!”
However, Packer himself dispelled that he was forced out and denied any acrimony between himself and CBS when he told the Associated Press that summer he’d made the decision to step down the year prior.
It’s impossible not to reminisce on Tournaments of yesteryear and not hear Packer echo in your head. For me growing an Arizona Wildcats fan, his call of “Simon says: Championship!” when Miles Simon led UA to the 1997 title is an indelible part of the run.