Giannotto
But this wasn’t any other circumstance. This was a game played five days after the Tigers lost at home to a below .500 South Florida team. This was a game between two teams trying desperately to get on the right side of the NCAA Tournament bubble. This was a game that would have counted as a Quadrant 1 win for Memphis, and the Tigers’ profile features only one of those at the moment.
This version of Cincinnati was begging Memphis to come into sold-out Fifth Third Arena and steal a win. For awhile, a bunch of Memphis freshmen looked poised enough to pull it off.
The Tigers led by 10 with six minutes to go and seven with four minutes to go thanks to Achiuwa, who morphed into a beast following a rocky first half and ignited the rest of the team.
Guard Boogie Ellis looked nothing like the timid freshman who couldn’t seem to score when league play began, attacking the rim for timely floaters and layups. Freshman Lester Quinones had the gumption to knock down big shot after big shot early on to quiet a raucous crowd when the offense looked ragged. Initially, when Cincinnati responded and those fans tried to get louder, the Tigers answered right back.
“We locked in today,” Quinones said. “We came together.”
Until the score was 68-61 in Memphis’ favor with less than four minutes to go. Then it all fell apart.
That’s when Cumberland drove into the lane, Quinones set his feet to draw a charge and Cumberland — the reigning AAC player of the year — should’ve picked up his fifth foul. An official called a block.
It happened again to start overtime, this time when Quinones set his feet to draw a charge against Cincinnati’s Keith Williams and instead Williams was awarded a three-point play. It came right after a play in which Hardaway felt a foul should have been called on a drive by sophomore Alex Lomax.
“It’s comical, really,” Hardaway said. “I thought that ALO got fouled by Chris Vogt going to the basket and the ref was like, ‘I’m not going to bail him out.’ ”
Hardaway might be right, but it’s also the wrong statement to be focused on right now. It’s this one:
“We’re growing immensely,” Hardaway said. “To lose James (Wiseman), to lose D.J. (Jeffries) and to keep fighting. Obviously we’ve lost some games at home that we shouldn’t have lost. But to keep fighting and scrapping the way we are, I’m proud of the guys.”
It sounds good, right? It sounds like this fragile team may have found itself in Cincinnati.
It also ignores that, in many ways, this loss wasn’t different at all. Because aside from that 40-point debacle at Tulsa, effort has never really been the problem for these Tigers. It’s the issues that haven’t been solved.
The Tigers once again blew a second-half lead in a game they should’ve won, just like they blew second-half leads in losses to Georgia, SMU and USF they should’ve won. They once again shot poorly from the free throw line. They once again didn’t get the ball to Achiuwa in crunch time, and instead watched Lomax and freshman Malcolm
Dandridge take the final four shots of regulation.
They once again couldn’t corral a rebound in the closing seconds that could have prevented overtime, that could have made this more than a moral victory.
“This team wasn’t built around the guys we have right now," Hardaway said. "It was built around James Wiseman and these guys would come in and complement James Wiseman. Now, we’ve got to scrap it out. That’s no knock. We’ve still got talent. That’s how we’re able to play in games like this and still be around, and I’m proud of all of these guys.”
So after another near miss, after everything this team has endured through 24 games, how you view this season really depends on how you view that.
You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter: @mgiannotto