A Star is Born.

Okay. Real quick. I watched KU come back from a 19-point deficit against our departing rivals, Missouri, in the fieldhouse last season. I watched on a house monitor during a Missouri Mavericks hockey game at The Independence Event Center on January 30, 2010, as a fiesty senior Sherron Collins transcended to one of the all-time great Jayhawks. He willed an overtime layup into the rim, and into Jayhawk lore. From an apartment room on 14th and Tennessee packed with undergrads and alumni, I watched Mario's Miracle. I listened on CBS Radio, through static and disinterested companions, coming back from a family trip to Orlando, as Keith Langford outbattled Jarrett Jack to overcome Ga Tech on New Year's of '05. I sat on my oversized chair at our apartment in Davenport, Iowa, and watched Dick Vitale give Nick Collison a standing ovation for his 24 & 23 performance against UT in '03. The first-ever game I attended at Allen Fieldhouse, before I was ever a member of the student body, was the "Jacque Vaughn layup" game of 1995. Still the loudest game I will ever believe could ever occur. These are the greatest memories of great victories of my ultimate passion, my alma mater. They were joined on Wednesday night, and quite unexpectedly. It was thirty-nine and a half minutes of very pedestrian play by my beloved Hawks. Well, that is, if an individual performance of 33 points, including 6 3-pointers could ever be termed "pedestrian". Which, of course, it couldn't. In his 13 game regular season tenure at KU, Ben McLemore (@Humb1e_Hungry23) has led the team in scoring 5 times. He has clocked 20 or more minutes in every game and scored 9 or more points, including 22 in 36 minutes against their sole road game in Columbus, OH. He was, before Wednesday night, highly heralded by the sports media, and climbing the draft boards of NBA prognosticators. All of that being said... his legend was born Wednesday, January 9, 2013. It wasn't the 33 points. It wasn't the 6 huge buckets from 3-point land. It wasn't the showtime dunk off of the Withey steal to put KU up after trailing most of the 2nd set. Nope. It was the shot. The bank shot tres to send the game into OT not only pushed B-Mac to the very top of every NBA draft board. More importantly, it put him on my list of greatest Jayhawk victories of all-time. That's the stuff that legends are made of. Stay humble. Stay hungry.