By David Garfield
After Roy Williams and his Jayhawks came so close to winning the national championship in 1991 and 1993, his hunger burned even stronger to be the last team standing at the end of the season.
Coach Williams’ ‘91 team lost to Duke in the national title game, while his ‘93 squad fell to North Carolina in the national semifinals. After that painful loss to UNC, Williams was already looking for redemption.
“We’ve been knocking on the door and we’re going to keep knocking until we knock it down,” Williams said at the time.
Entering the 2001-02 season, it had been just over eight long years since Williams and KU had reached the Final Four. Williams kept winning games, fans and conference titles, but the coach had come under fire by some critics for failing to make the Final Four and win it all with such great players like Paul Pierce, Jacque Vaughn, Raef LaFrentz and Scot Pollard from the 1997 team, the best squad in college hoops that season which was stunned in the Sweet 16 by Arizona.
Williams had other powerful teams, but for whatever reason (tightness, etc.) they always came up short in March. However, Williams now believed he had his best chance since 1998 to make a run for the national championship.
After all, he had four returning starters in Nick Collison, Drew Gooden, Kirk Hinrich and Jeff Boschee, mixed with one of the best recruiting classes in the nation featuring Keith Langford and McDonald’s All-Americans Wayne Simien and Aaron Miles.
On page 10 of the 2001-02 KU Media Guide featured this headline:
“Impressive Mix Of Youth And Experience Has Jayhawks Poised For 2002 National Title Chase.”
Still, Williams knew there were question marks for a squad which hadn’t won the Big 12 title since 1998 and lost Eric Chenowith (team’s second-leading rebounder), Kenny Gregory (No. 2 leading scorer) and Luke Axtell from last season’s 26-7 team, which advanced to the Sweet 16 for just the first time since 1997.
How would KU fare with a smaller, three-guard lineup of Boschee, Hinrich and Miles? How would the four freshmen (Michael Lee was also beginning his KU career) adjust to major college basketball? And how would KU’s thin frontline depth fare if KU’s starters faced foul trouble?
While most prognosticators still viewed KU as one of the nation’s top 10 teams, one preseason magazine picked the Jayhawks to finish just third in the Big 12.
“The pressure to win, here in America’s Heartland, has subsided,” ESPN.com’s Andy Katz wrote on Oct. 16, 2001. “If that’s possible when it comes to Kansas basketball. But these Jayhawks seem looser, at least more relaxed, which means a Final Four run is a lot more realistic this season.”
One fact seemed certain: KU was going to enjoy the journey.
“This team will have a feeling of let’s have some fun while we play our tails off,” Williams told Katz that October day. “(Last season’s seniors) Eric and Kenny did what they were supposed to do for us, but in the back of their minds they were thinking about the NBA last season. Luke was so unsettled (because of injuries). All three did a great job for us, but I think we’ll have a more normal situation.”
KU’s road to a possible Final Four and national championship a decade ago had a bumpy start with a season-opening loss (93-91) to Ball State in the EA Sports Maui Invitational. That was KU’s first season-opening defeat since 1990 and snapped its 36-game win streak in the month of November.
But Kansas would rebound and win its next 13 games while eclipsing 100 points four times, including a 105-97 victory at No. 4 Arizona to open December, KU’s first win over a top five team since 1997.
After suffering an 87-77 loss at No. 11 UCLA, Kansas dominated the rest of the regular season, winning 14 straight games en route to a 16-0 record in Big 12 play. The Jayhawks made history by becoming the first Big 12 team to go undefeated in conference play.
KU was winning games with an exciting, uptempo attack featuring that splendid three-guard lineup who pushed the ball after every opponent’s missed or made shot. Miles had stepped into his starting role at point guard and ran the offense with aplomb; Boschee was one of the nation’s most feared three-point shooters; and Hinrich was a complete guard who could shoot, pass, and defend the other team’s best wing player.
Up front, Gooden had come into his own as one of America’s best and become a double-double machine. Collison was a powerful force inside as well (“That was an unbelievable frontcourt,” Pollard said) and Simien was a rising star off the bench. And then there was another key reserve in Langford, who could provide instant offense.
The high-octane and high-flying Jayhawks were winning fans, former players, and opposing coaches over with their play.
After KU whipped Bob Knight’s Texas Tech team, 108-81, in February in Allen Fieldhouse, the normally reserved Knight gushed over the Jayhawks.
“I think we just got beat by a much better team,” Knight said. “We knew coming in how good they were. What they have in this team is that they are relentless. They just keep playing, and playing, and playing. I don’t think that other teams understand this. They are really fun to watch. They come at you full throttle. There is just a relentless quality to this team.”
The “R” word was used often describing this impressive 2001-02 Final Four team, which was honored this season with its 10-year anniversary during the Iowa State game at Allen Fieldhouse on Jan. 14.
“I can finally say now that we are relentless. We’re not going to give up. We’re not going to give in,” Gooden said in February 2002. “We have something this year, it’s heart. In past years, we never had heart and we gave in. ... We’re sticking together. I think we’re a championship team.”
KU’s march to the national championship began in postseason play at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Mo., for the Big 12 Tournament. The No. 1 Jayhawks were riding high after sweeping the Big 12 and beating Missouri in Columbia, 95-92, in the regular-season finale.
And they drove their motor into a higher gear in their first two games in Kansas City.
Kansas first blitzed Colorado, 102-73 (KU’s 102 points set a Big 12 Tournament record), and then Texas Tech, 90-50.
However, KU’s 16-game winning streak ended in the tournament championship against Oklahoma, 64-55. Kansas shot just 33.3 percent from the field and 16.7 percent from three-point range as Hinrich missed all 10 shots, including six three-pointers.
For KU and its star Gooden, it was time to refocus heading into the Big Dance.
“I got my eyes on the prize,” Gooden said with his trademark smile.
At 29-3, KU was awarded a prized No. 1 seed in the Midwest Regional and opened the first two rounds in nearby St. Louis.
First up was Holy Cross.
While a No. 16 seed had never beaten a No. 1 seed, Holy Cross was actually ahead of KU at halftime, 37-35, before KU rebounded and grinded out a 70-59 victory.
KU’s win set up a second-round matchup with No. 24 Stanford. The big question surrounding the game was the availability of Hinrich, who sprained his ankle late in the first half against Holy Cross.
The Sioux City, Iowa, native answered the call and turned in a gutty and memorable performance. After KU stormed out to a 15-0 lead, Hinrich came off the bench and sparked KU with 15 points, eight assists and five rebounds in 21 minutes as Kansas coasted to an 86-63 victory over the Cardinal. KU shot 52.2 percent from the field and 47.4 percent from downtown, while holding Stanford to a season opponent low 13.6 percent (3 of 22) from three-point range.
But the story of the game was the fearless Hinrich, who never stopped diving for loose balls despite his injury.
“He is as tough a youngster as I’ve ever coached,” Williams said afterwards. “He is one player I have never questioned his ‘want-to.’ With some kids sometimes you do, with Kirk never, and that says a lot.”
So now the Jayhawks were back in the Sweet 16 against Bill Self’s Illinois team, which had eliminated them from the NCAA tournament last year in the same round.
But KU, which was overmatched by Illinois’s toughness a year ago and whipped, 80-64, featured a different team this time. They were more mature, tougher, better, and more hungry to reach the Final Four and win a national championship.
KU eventually prevailed in a tight battle, 73-69, at the Kohl Center in Madison, Wisc., with defense and rebounding. KU held Illinois to just 38.1 percent shooting while outrebounding the Fighting Illini, 41-34. With Hinrich (three points in 17 minutes) and Collison (11 points and nine rebounds in 20 minutes) forced to the bench with foul trouble, the fab three freshmen of Simien, Miles and Langford picked up the slack with 35 combined points.
Self, now the KU head coach, remembers that contest quite well.
“We had a shot, wide open 16-footer to put it into overtime,” Self said. “Kansas really got a bad draw that year being a one seed because they got a four seed (Illinois) in their bracket that was playing as well as a one seed at that time. We were playing so good. We won like 11 in a row. That was a great game.”
The Jayhawks hoped to keep the magic going against the strong No. 11 and two-seeded Oregon Ducks in the Elite Eight.
And they did.
Kansas broke open a 48-42 game at halftime by winning 104-86, the second-most points scored in an NCAA tournament game by the Jayhawks. Gooden (18 points and 20 rebounds) and Collison (25 points and 15 rebounds) were unstoppable inside as KU dominated the glass, 63-34. Langford was also brilliant off the bench with 20 points in just 22 minutes.
As the KU players and coaches, one by one, cut down the nets in front of their rabid supporters at Kohl Center and the Jayhawk Nation watching on national television, Williams smiled with great pride and soaked in the moment.
“It’s a great feeling,” Williams said then. “To watch these kids celebrate and cut down the net, it’s the greatest moment you can have as a coach.”
But make no mistake, Williams and KU didn’t come this far to cut down just one net in the Big Dance. They wanted to cut down another one on April 1 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta after winning the national championship, the prized net which had eluded this program since Danny and the Miracles won it all in 1988.
But that task wouldn’t be easy facing No. 4 Maryland, a hot and confident team like Kansas which was 30-4 and won 17 of its last 19 games. The Terrapins boasted great talent in forwards Chris Wilcox, Lonny Baxter and Byron Mouton, plus dynamite guards Juan Dixon and Steve Blake.
With a crowd of 53,378 on hand and hyped Jayhawk fans also gathered in Memorial Stadium watching the game on the football video board, KU jumped out to a 13-2 lead. However, Williams wasn’t too happy with KU’s shot selection during that run.
“We started the game by taking several bad shots that all went in,” Williams wrote in his 2009 autobiography, “Hard Work: A Life on and off the Court.”
“During a timeout, I told my team, ‘Guys, let’s not live by that because we could die by that.’ That’s fool’s gold. Let’s get the shots we want.”
But the Jayhawks continued taking “a few more bad shots” that didn’t hit nylon.
Williams wrote then “we started panicking and never really recovered. Looking back on it, I didn’t know if I did the right thing by questioning those shots, but I thought taking bad shots would eventually cost us the game, and it did.”
Maryland stormed back after its early deficit and went into halftime with a 44-37 lead. The Terrapins, behind Dixon’s game-high 33 points, extended their lead to 20 with 6:10 remaining before the Jayhawks came charging back and cut the lead to just five with 2:10 to play.
However, KU would could come no closer as Maryland won, 97-88. Collison led KU with 21 points and 10 rebounds while Miles also posted a double-double with 12 points and 10 assists.
“I was about as proud as my team as I’ve ever been in my entire life,” Williams said in the postgame press conference about KU’s valiant rally. “They kept believing that they could still get it done, made a fantastic comeback, got it to five. We had the ball with a minute and 23 to play, I think it was. But we couldn’t quite get over the hump.”
Despite the loss and not playing its best (KU shot just 43.3 percent and committed a season-high 27 fouls), it was a magical season for Williams’ Jayhawks. They left an indelible mark in school history with setting single-season records in points scored (3,365) and steals (357), while ranking second in Jayhawk annals in points per game (90.9), rebounds (1,638), field goals (1,259), free throws (623), three-point field goal percentage (.418), assists (767) and steals per game (9.65).
KU (33-4) also led the nation in four categories — points per game (90.9), assists per game (20.7), field goal percentage (50.6) and winning percentage (.892).
Gooden, who left college after that junior season to enter the NBA draft, collected a Big 12 and school-record 25 double-doubles and 423 rebounds (second most at the time behind Wilt Chamberlain in a single season in KU history) while becoming a consensus first-team All-American and just the second player in Jayhawk history to amass at least 1,500 career points, 900 rebounds, 100 block shots and 100 steals.
Boschee, meanwhile, concluded his career as the all-time three-point field goal shooter in Kansas and Big 12 history.
That team boasted arguably as much talent as any squad in KU history with four players (Hinrich, Collison, Simien and Gooden) ultimately having their jerseys retired and hanging in the Allen Fieldhouse rafters. Then there’s Miles, who currently ranks No. 8 in NCAA history in career assists, while Langford is KU’s seventh all-time leading scorer.
Indeed, it was a team for the ages.
“That was a fabulous basketball team, a great team,” Self said. “I would say that would rival Roy’s teams with Paul and Raef and Jacque and Scot, that group. I think they were right there, real close to those guys.”
Self definitely believes the 2001-02 team was “the best team in the country that year.”
“Whenever you can bring Keith and Wayne off the bench, even though they’re young, that’s pretty good. They had all the pieces,” Self said. “They had a designated shooter (Boschee), they had a designated point (Miles), they had guys on the wing that could make plays and throw it inside to two lottery picks (Collison and Gooden). The two guard (Hinrich) was arguably the best guard in the country.”
These were great players who truly became a TEAM and sacrificed each practice and game while enjoying the road to the Final Four.
“We've had some teams where it's been a battle every day just to get them to practice,” Williams said following the season. “Some teams you have to push a lot harder and pull, this team I didn't. It was fun to be at practice with these kids and they worked pretty doggone hard. When push came to shove during the big moments, they played their tails off. This team is not afraid to step up and make big plays, they didn't shy back, they didn't retreat, they didn't get too cautious. They weren't afraid of what's going to happen, they just went after it.”
While KU didn’t knock down the door and win the national championship, the emotional and tearful Williams was quite proud of how far they came. As far as he was concerned, all his players in the locker room that evening after the Maryland loss were winners.
“I thought we were going to be pretty good this year. But I didn't think we were going to be as good as we were,” Williams said. “This bunch is a heck of a basketball team, and they took old Roy for a really good ride. I would have liked to have gone a couple more days, but they took me for a great ride.”
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