WHAT MAKES UTEP SO TOUGH?
Tim Floyd, for one. He’s 3-2 against Pastner.
EL PASO, Texas — While University of Memphis coach Josh Pastner boasts an impressive .812 winning percentage against Conference USA teams in four seasons at the helm, no league foe has given Pastner and the Tigers more trouble since he took over in 2009 than UTEP.
The Miners, whom No. 25-ranked Memphis (254, 14- 0 in C-USA) face Tuesday at 8:15 p.m. at the Don Haskins Center, have handed Pastner three of his 13 losses to C-USA teams since the 2009-10 season.
The fact is, UTEP (16-12, 9-5) has owned Memphis in the regular season the past three years, having gone 3- 0 in the teams’ regular-season meetings. That includes a 60-58 win at FedExForum last season that likely kept the Tigers from earning at least a No. 6 seed in last year’s NCAA Tournament.
Although Memphis avenged two of those three losses in the last two C-USA tournaments — beating UTEP in the tourney championship at the Don Haskins Center in 2011 and dispatching the Miners again in last year’s quarterfinals — UTEP remains the only C-USA
team that owns a winning record (3-2) against Pastner and the Tigers since he replaced John Calipari four years ago.
What has made the Miners so successful against Memphis? Much of it has to do with their third-year coach, Tim Floyd, who has put together 17 winning seasons in 19 years as a collegiate head coach and guided the NBA’s New Orleans Hornets to the playoffs in 2004.
Floyd is a master at slowing down the game, and that’s precisely what the Miners have done this season, having limited C-USA opponents to a league-low 59.4 points per game.
Memphis, on the other hand, ranks first in league play in scoring offense (77.5), making Tuesday’s contest — just like those before it the last two seasons — a battle of opposing styles.
“He’s a tremendous coach, coach Floyd,” said Pastner, whose Tigers fell six spots to No. 25 in The Associated Press poll Monday and three spots to No. 20 in the USA Today coaches poll after dropping their first road game of the season last Tuesday at Xavier (64- 62).
“(The Miners) run really good stuff offensively and they play a defensive system that not everyone sees on a daily basis. They’ll play different defenses — some triangleand-two, some box-andone. They want to control pace like we want to control pace. So it’s two differ- ent (styles).”
Said senior forward D.J. Stephens: “They just throw a lot of different stuff at you. Sometimes you might not be used to the stuff they throw at you. But we just gotta stick to what we do; try to use our advantage and come up with the win.”
UTEP is 13-2 at home this season, with the two losses coming to UNLV (62- 60) in December and Tulsa (74-70) in February. The Miners’ 13 home wins include a pair of victories over top-70 RPI teams in No. 19-ranked Oregon (9184, 3OT) and New Mexico State (55-54).
Two years ago, in Pastner’s second season, UTEP handed Memphis what remains its most lopsided loss under Pastner, a 74-47 defeat at the Don Haskins Center.
While Memphis, owner of the nation’s second-best road record (8-1), has already secured C-USA’s regular-season title and the No. 1 seed in next week’s C-USA tournament in Tulsa, Tuesday’s game could be a preview for the Tigers of how teams will attempt to slow them down in the NCAA Tournament — a la Saint Louis last year.
“The NCAA (selection) committee, I think they’re really looking at road criteria,” said Pastner, whose team wraps up the regular season Saturday at home against UAB. “We’ve done a good job to this point on the road and I think everyone knows that UTEP is one of the toughest places to play in the entire country.
“So I look at this as a great opportunity for us.”