What if Kansas Hadn’t Been Distracted?

Everyone said it was a shame Al McGuire didn’t live long enough to see this, but that was before Kansas crushed Marquette on Saturday, 94-61, in a national semifinal “contest” at the Superdome.

No Marquette worshiper needed to see this.

Kansas hit the court running with a fastbreak basketball recipe you might call slam-jambalaya.

Marquette’s first Final Four trip since McGuire led a memorable title run in 1977 ended with one team playing Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotters.

Where on planet Earth did this come from?

Kansas Coach Roy Williams said his team played with a “frenzy” and for Marquette it did sort of resemble a Hitchcock movie.

Only a week ago Marquette had ended Kentucky’s 26-game winning streak to win the Midwest Regional and every minute since the Golden Eagles have scoffed at being referred to as a mid-major program from a second-tier conference.

Saturday night, Marquette fans were being kept from second-story ledges.

Kansas’ victory was so thorough and breathtaking it almost strained credulity.

The Jayhawks scored 23 points before Nick Collison, their All-American forward, scored his first.

Kansas went on two 18-4 runs, one to end the first half and another to start the second.

Impressive.

“I cannot remember any time where we’ve done that kind of thing,” Williams later said.

The victory was calculated and almost cold-blooded.

Asked afterward if he felt sorry for beating Marquette so badly, guard Keith Langford quipped an emphatic, “Nope.”

Collision then chimed in with a “Nope” of his own.

Kansas played like a team trying to win a championship for its outgoing coach, a recurring NCAA theme.

In 1975, UCLA’s John Wooden announced his retirement after the national semifinals and his inspired Bruins defeated Louisville in the national title game.

In 1977, it was Marquette’s McGuire who used the retirement card and his then-Warriors who turned emotion into victory over North Carolina to send McGuire out on a magic carpet of “seashells and balloons.”

The catch this week with Kansas is that Roy Williams has not announced he’s going anywhere -- it only feels that way.

Turns out there was not a shred of truth to the notion all this Williams-to-North Carolina talk would be a distraction and undercut Kansas’ title chances.

Tough to call 94-61 a distraction.

Yet, there was no denying the vibe here.

Williams turned North Carolina down three years ago in a tearful seven-day period of angst and introspection and, guess what, that dream job unexpectedly opened again in Chapel Hill.

And maybe this time Williams won’t be able to just say no to former coach Dean Smith, the man Williams mentored under for 10 years.

If Williams isn’t interested in North Carolina, why didn’t he just say so last week and get the media off his case (because, maybe, he is interested?).

You say: How could Williams leave Kansas if he finally wins his first national title Monday?

We say: The same way Larry Brown left Kansas after he won his first national title in 1988.

There was an undeniable subtext to Saturday’s Kansas-Marquette game as basketball watchers anticipate the ripple effect any Williams decision would cause.

Interestingly, one of the coaches most eager to see how the Kansas situation shakes out is Marquette Coach Tom Crean.

If Williams left, Crean figured to be the perfect man to replace him.

But now you wonder, in the recesses of your rumor-mill mind, whether Crean’s performance against Kansas might end up costing him the Kansas job.

You can parse this Williams thing a hundred different ways, but there was no denying Kansas played Saturday’s game with a particular purpose.

“There was a certain determination from everybody,” Langford said. “Everybody was so confident.”

Part of it was the passion of seniors Collison and Kirk Hinrich, pushing themselves to the limit on the final weekend of their collegiate careers.

Part of it was the confluence of Williams’ coaching skills and his splendid implementation of fastbreak fastball.

“It is an attitude,” Williams said. “We’re going to attack you. We can win games in the 50s and 60s, but we enjoy playing in the 80s and 90s.”

Kansas’ basket-to-basket legwork Saturday ranked with any snippet you could cull from a UCLA tournament catalog. Kansas simply has gears other teams can’t shift into.

Part of it was only a feeling, that Williams will win this tournament, punctuate an illustrious 15-year career at Kansas and move on to North Carolina, where he will ride in on a white steed to rescue the program Smith built over four decades and Matt Doherty deconstructed in two years.

Who knows, maybe Williams will come back to Kansas, win or lose.

Maybe he’s messing with us the way his team’s fastbreak messes with opponents.

“No question I hope it has a psychological impact,” he said of his team’s up-tempo style.

Still, this Final Four almost has a scripted feel, as if it’s all mapped out in Williams’ mind and the only thing left for him to do is spill it.

Williams has a habit of not looking at the scoreboard during the first half of Kansas games. He accidentally caught a glimpse of the scoreboard in a 7-7 game, but when he looked up again, on his way to the locker room at halftime, his team was up by 29.

Maybe on Monday, Williams looks up one last time, walks out, then walks off.

Could you script it any better than that?