SAN ANTONIO — Call it a premonition, call it a hunch, call it whatever you want. Christopher Douglas and Judy Robert just had a feeling about their baby boy Christopher.

So Judy Roberts wasn’t about to let her son go through life without a little Roberts in his name, and Christopher Sr. had the same affinity for Douglas. Thus, Chris Douglas-Roberts was born.

“I guess my parents thought I was going to be something big,” Douglas-Roberts said on the eve of the biggest basketball game of his life.

Memphis’ lanky star certainly has proved his parents correct during the NCAA tournament. Alongside freshman guard Derrick Rose, Douglas-Roberts – you can call him CDR – has led Memphis to the brink of a National Championship.

“We’ve peaked,” Douglas Roberts said. “We’ve sort of found each other in this tournament.”

Using an innovative free-flowing offense known as the dribble-drive motion, Memphis has played almost flawless basketball in its last three games. The offense – which Calipari adopted from a high school coach – stresses penetration and utilizes Memphis’ vast collection of athletes.

“They feel unleashed,” Calipari said.

The Tigers have looked unleashed in their last three games, outscoring Michigan State, Texas and UCLA by a combined 51 points on their way to tonight’s title match-up.

“They’ve got two guys who can score whenever they want to,” Kansas junior guard Brandon Rush said about the combo of Rose and Douglas-Roberts.

Kansas’ Bill Self knows all about the explosive scoring exploits of Rose and Douglas-Roberts. He recruited them both and whiffed each time.

When Douglas-Roberts was a junior at Cass Technical High School in Detroit, Self and assistant coach Danny Manning journeyed to the Motor City and gave Douglas-Roberts the Kansas basketball sales pitch.

“Obviously, he wasn’t that impressed,” Self said.

Douglas-Roberts said he liked Self’s genuine personality, but in the end, he felt more comfortable at Memphis.

CDR needed a program that liked to run, played fast and could utilize his unique skill set.

How one describes that skill set is up to you. It seems everybody has their own way of describing it.

Rose said it was, “old man moves.”

Rush called it akward, “You just don’t know how to guard it.”

Using his gangly 6-foot-7 frame to penetrate, Douglas-Roberts likes to twist his body into the lane to hoist up runners from extreme angles.

And with a 18.0 points per game average during the regular season, and 28 points in Memphis’ Final Four victory against UCLA, Calipari is an advocate of Douglas-Roberts’ old-school style.

“When his motor’s running it’s ridiculous,” Calipari said.

Rose, a freshman point guard, is scoring 21.7 points a game and dishing out more than five assists per game in the NCAA tournament.

“He’s the most complete point guard I’ve played against all year,” Kansas senior guard Russell Robinson said of Rose, who missed Sunday’s media session because of stomach problems. “He can make plays, he can shoot it, he can drive it; he can score it.”

After Memphis’ 78-63 victory against UCLA in the early game on Saturday, Douglas-Roberts and the rest of the Tigers settled into play the role of concerned spectators during the Kansas-North Carolina game.

Douglas-Roberts saw Kansas’ athletic guards, its up-tempo style and couldn’t help but think of his own team.

“I see that chip on their shoulder,” Douglas-Roberts said, “‘cause we have that.”

CDR said the chip on the Tigers’ shoulders comes from something deeper than basketball.

“I feel people judge us and don’t really know us,” Douglas-Roberts said.

People look at their tattoos and their ghetto backgrounds and automatically label the Tigers, Douglas-Roberts said.

CDR has five tattoos himself, including one of a Psalms bible verse.

“I tap it three times before I shoot a free throw,” he said.

Now Memphis, led by Douglas-Roberts and Rose, are matched up with Kansas; a team Memphis senior Joey Dorsey says looks like a mirror image of his squad.

Douglas-Roberts sat confidently on Sunday during Memphis’ media session, 30 hours from the biggest game of his life. Both the Douglas and Roberts were spelled out on the name placard that sat in front of him, each receiving equal billing.

After Memphis and Kansas both notched double-digit victories on Saturday, a reporter was curious: are Memphis and Kansas just that much better than everyone else?

“That what it looks like,” Douglas-Roberts said.

— Edited by Daniel Reyes