Championship game 2003

2003 brought a lot of heartbreak to the CCP (ccp stands for country club penthouse and was the name of the suite that I shared with Michael Paradise and Aaron Purkeypile).  I would like to place all of the blame on how the season ended on who deserves it, Michael Christopher Paradise.  The week before the Final Four Michael was headed down to the basement in the Prescott Elevator to wash his clothes.  In his hand he carried two quarters.  In this moment he decided to play a little game.  He would flip quarters to see who would win the games.  If it was heads KU would win.  If it was tails KU would lose.  He flipped the first quarter...Heads!  KU would win the first game of the Final Four! If you don't remember what I wrote yesterday this actually came true when KU beat Marquette like they stole peaches from Farmer Johnson's farm.  He flipped the second quarter...tails.  KU is now destined to lose in the championship game.  He reached down to pickup the quarter when the tails side of the quarter caught his attention.  It was a North Carolina quarter.  For those of you in your College Writing 1 class that what I did right there is called Foreshadowing.
The big matchup was going to be between the young guns of Syracuse and the veteran leadership of the Seniors of Kansas.  Michael, Aaron and I got invited to watch this game at Stephanie Vercio's Grandma's house (Steph is now a Larson).  There were a few Kansas fans there.  I remember Tasha and Billy Heinrich and one their buddies was in the building.
I don't have to tell you what happened in the game cause you already know.  Gerry Mcnamara came out and went bonkers from the three point line.  He could not miss.  He hit six threes in that first half.  KU missed 18 free throws.  Going 12 for 30 in the championship game isn't a good thing.  KU cut it to 80-78.  Michael Lee had a wide open three that ended up being blocked.  My favorite KU team with my favorite basketball player of all time had lost in the championship game.
After the game Stephanie spilled a bunch of pancake batter on my Royals hat ruining it (an example of things never going my way when my team loses).  On the way home Michael told us about how he flipped the quarters in the elevator.  We did not look him in the eye for a long time.  When I got in my dorm room I had 9 messages on my answering machine.  Every single one of them was somebody from Minnesota making fun of Kansas losing.  All in all it was miserable.  After that it took about a week before Roy Williams decided to leave Kansas while at the same time ruining my life.  I was hopeful that he would stay.   Here is some videos that break down my pain.  I do like Roy telling Bonnie Bernstein that he doesn't really care about North Carolina.