Chalmers clutch when it counts for Kansas

by Mark Kriegel, Fox Sports

Updated: April 10, 2008,

SAN ANTONIO - Amid the great din, under a bright shower of streamers and confetti, Almario Venard Chalmers, a 21-year-old better known as Mario, made his way toward the southwest corner of the Alamodome. This was no easy task, as he had to navigate through the sea of well-wishers.

Finally, though, he found her.  Almarie Chalmers, with her Jayhawk T-shirt, had come from the Kansas rooting section to greet her son. What they shared wasn't a hug so much as an elongated sway. They held each other tightly as Almarie eventually — inevitably, perhaps — began to convulse, then cry with joy.

You can keep all the stage-managed emotions, all the made-for-TV sentiments. You can stop humming along with "One Shining Moment." This was authentic. After all the hustle and the hype, this was the pure stuff.  "We did it," he said. "We did it, mom."  "Oh my," she said. "My prayers are answered."

The miracle of which Almarie Chalmers spoke came with two seconds remaining in regulation time.  The play — what looked like Kansas' last chance — seemed to fall apart when Sherron Collins stumbled with the ball on his way up court. Still, somehow, Collins managed to hand the ball off to Chalmers before he fell. It looked like a busted play, a desperate last-second exercise that would certainly end with John Calipari's Memphis Tigers winning the national championship.

Chalmers, however, would describe it differently.  "We relocated," he said.  Relocated? It was a curious term for a sequence that would quickly become basketball history.  "I had a guy in my face," he would recall. "But I had a good look at it."

Still, with the game clock about to expire, the odds were not in his favor. Sure, Memphis had blown a lead, squandering a 60-51 advantage with 2:12 left. Calipari's team had done what it had been doing all season — missing free throws, four out of five in the last 1:15. That gave Kansas a chance, just not a good one. Actually, in that moment before the ball left Chalmers' hands, it seemed as if Kansas had finally exhausted its supply of good luck.

"Did you think it was going in?" I asked Mrs. Chalmers.  She paused.  "I've seen it happen before."  She was referring to her son's 3-point shot that beat Texas in last year's Big 12 tournament. This wasn't the conference tournament, though. This was a long way from that.  "I knew it could happen," she said. "We've been waiting on this moment since he was 2 years old."  "We dreamed about him making this shot," said Ronnie Chalmers, Mario's father. "We've talked about it for years."

The Chalmers are a basketball family from North Carolina. Ronnie is a coach by trade. His odyssey took him to Bartlett High School in Anchorage, Alaska, where his son helped him win a couple of state championships. Presently, he holds the title of director of basketball operations for the University of Kansas. Father and son came as one of those Division I package deals.

And here's the best thing you can say about Mario Chalmers and the coaching he received:  "I thought it was going in when it left my hand," he said. "It felt pretty good."

The shot sent the game into overtime. But compared to the rest of the game — and it was a great one — the extra period seemed anticlimactic. Chalmers' shot took something from Memphis.

"Probably the biggest shot ever made in Kansas history," said coach Bill Self. "There's been nothing like it."  Probably the biggest shot in Memphis' history, too.  "I just knew we had the game after that," said Darrell Arthur, the Jayhawks' sophomore forward.

Kansas outscored Memphis 12-5 in overtime to win its first national championship in 20 years. Most of those points were scored in the paint. But the game was won at the guard position. Memphis has two great guards in Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts, who go 6-foot-3 and 6-foot-7, respectively. If only for one year, they were one of the best backcourts that college basketball has ever seen. They are fast and skilled and big, and it was thought (certainly by me) that they would have little difficulty exploiting the relatively puny Kansas guards.

Chalmers might be Kansas' best shooter. But he's only 6-foot-1. Sherron Collins, who, like Rose comes out of the Chicago public school league, might be the toughest kid on Kansas' roster. But he's listed at 5-foot-11.

For most of the night, it seemed as if Kansas was destined to lose to another team led by a one-and-done star. In 2003, they were beaten by Carmelo Anthony, who used his year at Syracuse as a finishing school for the NBA. This time, Kansas would fall victim to Rose, an extraordinarily complete talent who should probably be the first pick in the draft.

The Memphis guards played well. Still, they couldn't shake their counterparts from Kansas. Collins seemed particularly unintimidated by Rose. Maybe it was a Chicago thing. It was as if they were playing in the park, or an AAU game. Collins was the older kid. It wasn't for him to back down.

Collins finished with 11 points, 6 assists and 3 steals, including a crucial one with 1:24 left in regulation. Chalmers finished with 18 points, three of them earning him a gentle place in basketball history.

What Mario Chalmers thought of that shot as it left his hands also applies to his mother's weepy embrace. It felt pretty good.