The NCAA may be butchering another investigation, but they did something right on Tuesday. They are celebrating 75 years of March Madness with a list of all-time greats: the best players, teams, and moments in NCAA Tournament history. They aren’t ranked (wouldn’t that be a fun argument?) but there are plenty of arguments to be had by fans, and plenty of memories — good and bad — brought back to life in the lists. This note isn’t Big 12 related but I thought the same thing as our own editors said when I read the list for the first time:

“Shelvin Mack, really?”

Um, no.

With that out of the way, here’s how the Big 12 was represented:

Players

• C Bob Kurland, Oklahoma A&M 1943-46 (now Oklahoma State): Kurland played in the 1945 and 1946 NCAA Tournaments, winning the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player award in 1946. He was a three-time All-American (1944-46) and led Oklahoma A&M to back-to-back NCAA titles in 1945 and 1946, also winning two gold medals as a player.
• F Clyde Lovellette, Kansas 1949-52: Lovellette tells a story about his recruitment in high school. Kansas coach Phog Allen told the Indiana native that if he came to Kansas, the Jayhawks would win the 1952 national title and a gold medal in the Olympics. In 1952, Kansas beat St. John’s for the NCAA title then won a gold medal a few months later. Lovellette was an All-American and led the Big 7 in scoring each of his three seasons.
• C Wilt Chamberlain, Kansas 1956-58: He averaged 29.9 PPG in two seasons in Lawrence and is considered one of the greatest players of all time, making this one of the easier choices for the committee. Chamberlain was named the 1957 tournament’s Most Outstanding Player even though Kansas lost a three-overtime championship game to North Carolina, 54-53.
• F Danny Manning, Kansas 1984-88: Manning’s injury-ridden NBA career sometimes overshadows how great he was in college. He was the 1987-88 Player of the Year as well as the 1988 tournament MOP. He left Kansas as the Big 8’s all-time leading scorer with 2,951 points.

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I know the topic has been written about ad nauseum before, but I haven’t seen anything substantial written in the major news sources about it after the Elite 8 so I’m going to pretend that I’m breaking this story. . .

As most of you know after the 2003 season, Matt Doherty of 8-20 in 2001-2002 fame “resigned” from his position as head coach at UNC. Because Doherty resigned before the Final 4, much of the talk in the week leading up to the Final 4 that year (along with a freshman phenom Carmelo Anthony) was about who would take over the prized position as coach of the Tar Heels. After Dean Smith retired, he was succeeded for a brief period by Bill Guthridge, but that was only viewed as a temporary fix as, well let’s just say that Guthridge had a lot of “experience” by the time he became a head coach. UNC hired Doherty who was fresh off a great run at Notre Dame where he won a Big East Coach of the Year award. After a strong start, Doherty’s team fell apart the next year before entering the 2002-2003 season with a talented group of freshman that you may remember (Sean May, Rashad McCants, and Raymond Felton). They got off to a hot start that year winning the Preseason NIT with wins over then #2 Kansas (and Roy Williams) and a very talented Stanford squad. However, they fell apart when Sean May was injured soon after. Doherty’s resignation sparked widespread rumors with potential coaches ranging from the absurd (Dean Smith returning) to the more realistic choices (Williams and Larry Brown). Even Dick Vitale chimed in with his thoughts on the candidates.

All of this led up to the championship game, where after a week of questions about their coach leaving, Kansas fell to Syracuse 81-78 when Hakim Warrick came out of nowhere to swat away Michael Lee’s attempt to tie the game. In the post-game aftermath, Roy Williams was interviewed by Bonnie Bernstein. What followed was one of the great moments in sports TV history. Watch and enjoy:

It turns out that in some ways this “interview” became more famous or infamous (depending on your point of view) than the game itself. Some media members were quick to defend Bernstein. As for Williams, who late on April 7th denied even thinking about the UNC job for a second, he ended up leaving Kansas and his recruits and signed with UNC on April 14th. We won’t get into all the details of the process because it ended up being really convoluted, but Joe Posnanski covered it fairly well in his interview with Roy Williams soon after Williams decided to go to UNC.

The domino effect of this saga is pretty interesting in its own right:
– UNC hires Roy Williams from Kansas.
– Kansas hires Bill Self from Illinois.
– Illinois hires Bruce Weber from Southern Illinois.
– In 2005, UNC (Williams) defeats Illinois (Weber) in the national championship game.
– On Saturday night, Kansas (Self) gets a shot at revenge against Williams.

I can’t wait to see what the Kansas fans have in store for Old Roy on Saturday night. . .