Memphis
 

Sunday, January 9th, 2022
3:30 PM
FedEx Forum
ABC

The Tigers (8-5, 2-1 AAC, NET #51, KenPom #34) have been as erratic as any team in the country through the first two months of the season. They beat #15 Alabama at home by 14 in mid-December and also won at Wichita State by an 18-point margin last Saturday.

On their less impressive days, they've lost @Georgia, @Tulane, and to (an albeit strong) Murray State at home. They fought off a late comeback attempt by Tulsa this past Tuesday to win 67-64 at home.

This year's Memphis team has many similar attributes to Penny's past teams. They are long, ultra athletic, crash the offensive boards well, protect the rim, draw lots of fouls, play fast, create turnovers, and turn the ball over a lot themselves.

This year's Tigers have more raw talent than any prior team under Penny as they brought in the #1 recruiting class in 2021 and returned a sizable amount of talent to pair with their first year players.

Memphis is favored by 7.5 points in the Bearcats first road game of the AAC schedule.

Memphis is top 10 in the country in pace, offensive rebounding, getting to the foul line, and blocking shots. On the flip side, they rank in the bottom 100 in turnovers, defensive rebounding, fouling, and having their shots blocked. Despite shooting a decent 35% from deep, they don't attempt a lot of threes.

In general, the defense has let them down in their losses. In each loss, they either gave up a ton of fouls (Iowa St, Georgia, Ole Miss), threes (Murray St), or didn't cause any turnovers (Tulane). We don't get fouled much and aren't reliable 3pt shooters, so I think the main focus today should be taking care of the ball and limiting transition opportunities.

They are a very big team. Only Tyler Harris and Alex Lomax are under 6'5", but Lomax didn't play the last two games while Harris averaged only 17 minutes. They are extremely deep and balanced. No one plays more than 24 mpg and no one has a usage over 23. So there really aren't any players to key on. A good team effort is needed.

Davenport and Lakhin each rack up two quick fouls, good thing we have lots of big men.

Memphis is daring Newman to be the one who beats them.

Not sure what’s worse, watching a game on this hideous court or watching madsen attempt to guard bates…

Davenport 3 fouls. Third was an iffy call but can't be on the court with two and put yourself in hands of a poor decision.

Stat lines look remarkably similar at half-time, the difference is Memphis has 3 more offensive rebounds and thus has taken 4 more shots. They've also made 2 more FT's.

Felt like that half was the definition of "bend but don't break".

Hopefully Davenport can stay on the court during the 2nd half and we can continue to make shots that'll keep us in the game.

This team is such a joke and we are heading in the wrong direction. Should be irrelevant, or even more irrelevant in another year or two.

Losing sucks. No other way to put it.

Hope Davenport, MAW, DDJ, and Newman can build off their shooting performances from today.

Overall I was pretty happy with the game. If you'd told me a couple weeks ago that we'd hang tight with Memphis at their place, I wouldn't have believed you.

We gave good effort and shot it well. The little things are what killed us. MAW and Newman each missed front ends of 1-and-1's, MAW and DDJ each had bad critical TO's in key moments, we had a miscommunication on defense that left Harris wide open for a three.

That said, our defense needs to get more consistent. Memphis shot 47.7% from the field and had a 41% OR%. You don't win many games like that. Our insane shooting from 3 is what kept us in it, but in the end you need to defend and rebound to win most game.

I think the main problem today is that most of our bench players suck on the defensive end. Ody, Lakhin, Mason, Koval are not good defensively. Miller ended up sticking to the starting 5 for most of the second half, but guys are going to wear down against a team like Memphis.

If we play offense like we did today and defense like we did against SMU, we will be in great shape. We are starting to fit the pieces together, not there yet, but the product is slowly coming along.