Taylor King Heads to Villanova

It took Taylor King a season to decide Duke wasn't the right fit for him.

It took him less than 72 hours to figure out what did fit.

King, who had planned to visit Gonzaga and Southern Cal at the end of the month, committed on Sunday to transfer to Villanova after a weekend visit. He will enroll in June.

By NCAA rule, King won't be eligible to compete for a year. But he figures it will actually work in his favor. By the time King is ready to play, the Wildcats will have lost Shane Clark and Dante Cunningham to graduation.

"It just couldn't be a better fit for me," King said. "It wasn't about getting it over with. I wanted it. This gives me the best opportunity to start right away."

King played in all 34 games for the Blue Devils this season and averaged 5.5 points and 2.0 rebounds.

The 6-foot-6 forward gives Villanova something it desperately needs -- a solid outside shooter. The Wildcats have good players off the dribble in Scottie Reynolds and Corey Fisher. But aside from Corey Stokes, they have been lacking in the spot-on shooting department. King made 38 percent of his shots from 3-point range.

"I asked blunt questions, but I wanted everything they offered," said King, who becomes the third McDonald's All-American on Jay Wright's roster. "They laid down their game plan for me and I couldn't resist."

Kansas Crowned in Win over Memphis

It’s funny what one shot will do. When Mario Chalmers’ three-pointer swished through the nets, sent the game into overtime and essentially won the national championship for Kansas, Bill Self went from a good coach to one of the elite coaches in all of college basketball.

Sure he was already one of only four coaches to take three different schools to the Elite Eight, but until this year, Self was known for never being able to reach the Final Four.
Reaching the Final Four is one thing, but winning the national championship is another. Sure, Self had already gotten over the hump and reached college basketball’s greatest weekend, but when the clock hit zero on Monday night, he joined an elite group of coaches that can say they were national champions.

Bobby Knight, John Wooden, Coach K … All of the legendary coaches in the game today have cut down the nets and won a national championship. Now it’s Bill Self who has joined the party and can say the same thing.

But just what would have happened had Chalmers’ shot rimmed off and Kansas not won the game? How would Self have been remembered then?

“The outside public may view people that win a championship differently,” Self said after the game, “but all coaches know you don’t get smarter because a hard shot goes in than if it doesn’t go in.”

And he’s right. He didn’t physically change with the result of Chalmers’ historic heave. He’s the same coach he was before the shot and he’s the same person he would have been had the shot rimmed off, although he’s going to get a big raise from Lew Perkins and the Athletics Department staff in the near future because of it.

Think of two short weeks ago, when the shot by Jason Richards of Davidson missed to the left and the Jayhawks celebrated a trip to the Final Four. Had that shot been six inches to the right, Davidson would have been headed for San Antonio and Kansas would never had even had a chance to bring home the title. Six inches — that’s how close the Jayhawks were from not even making the Final Four.

Kansas fans who were bitter at Roy 'Choke' Williams for leaving for North Carolina cheered for the former coach when he was shown wearing a KU sticker while sitting in the stands. But in 15 years as the coach at Kansas, Choke Williams never did what Self was able to do on Monday night. With one high-arcing three pointer, Kansas fans around the country were finally able to forget about Roy and totally embrace Self as their guy.

With rumors that Self’s alma mater, Oklahoma State, is preparing to offer boat loads of money to sway Self back to Stillwater, Kansas fans can only hope that Perkins will be able to keep Self in Lawrence.

The first round losses to Bucknell and Bradley, which had fans clammoring on message boards for Self to be fired, now seem like a distant memory. The Jayhawks are national champions and Self has enshrined himself as one of the elite coaches in America and one of the all-time greats at Kansas.

And as crazy as it sounds, it’s all because of one shot. One three-pointer, from the top of the key. That’s all it took to not only change the outcome of the game, but to change the legacy of Bill Self.

Kansas Crushes UNC, 84-66 and head to Championship -vs- Memphis

As a perennial choker, Roy Williams taught Kansas all about how to handle cruel, crushing disappointments.

Bill Self schooled the Jayhawks on how to dish out some pain of their own.

Kansas left its former coach in the dust Saturday night, getting 25 pts and 7 boards from Brandon Rush to defend the usual late run by UNC for an 84-66 victory in the national semifinals.

Beat down into a 28 pt hole (40-12), late in the first half, Tyler (have you seen my contact?), Ellington and the Tar Heels made a last ditch effort, getting to within 5 with 9:00 to go.

But Kansas dealt their final crushing blow, and the over-rated, over-inflated egos lost in their effort to pull off the biggest Final Four comeback ever.

"We sort of came out a little more casual than we would've liked and they hit us right between the eyes," Williams said.

Now, the Jayhawks will play Memphis, an earlier 78-63 winner over UCLA, in Monday's title game.

I was going to write a piece about how UNC has been coddled all year with their easy schedule of cupcake teams, but chose rather to not waste my energy on such an over-rated team and will instead quote a fellow blogger:

UNC was routed because it was not tested during the early rounds of the tournament (or the season for that matter). It was given an unfair advantage by the NCAA, since it played four tourney games in NC. UNC also faced inferior competition, save for Louisville, which would have defeated them if the game was played in a neutral court. I knew that UNC would be in trouble in a neutral court, because the ACC teams which beat them (UMD, Duke) or came close to do it three times (Clemson) got dismantled by Big East teams. Furthermore, UNC is always at a disadvantage with athletic and physical teams (e.g. Hoyas in 2007). I therefore expected Kansas to handle them easily. In short, UNC was an overrated team, playing in an overrated conference. Kansas played a great game and exposed UNC for the fraud that it is.

Enough said about the loser 'heels, their crying interviews to the media prove how they were pampered all year, and how roy couldn't 'hand pick' this competition, the 3rd and final team of the year to put them in their place...


Congratulations Kansas!!

And now Kansas has more pressing things to deal with - stopping fast-breaking Memphis and its sensational freshman Derrick Rose.

"We know we've got another step to take Monday night," Sherron Collins said. "It's going to be a great matchup. They play fast, we play fast."