JUST WIN After FAU loss, Memphis must do what hasn’t been done before
Put away those NET rankings. Pay no mind to the next bracketology update. Stop preparing that Selection Sunday argument for why Memphis basketball deserves to be included in the NCAA tournament.
There’s no need for it anymore after the Tigers closed their exciting but exasperating regular season Saturday with a 92-84 loss at Florida Atlantic that showcased all the reasons why they were in this predicament.
It’s all straightforward now, probably for the first time in months.
Memphis has to win the American Athletic Conference tournament if it wants to make it to March Madness for the third straight year. It has to do what
Memphis has to win the American Athletic Conference tournament if it wants to make it to March Madness for the third straight year. It has to do what no Memphis team, and nobody in the AAC, has ever done – win four games in four days. The Tigers need the league’s automatic berth because they appeared to officially play their way out of an at-large bid when FAU blew past them on national television.
Mark Giannotto
no Memphis team, and nobody in the AAC, has ever done – win four games in four days.
The Tigers need the league’s automatic berth because they appeared to officially play their way out of an at-large bid when FAU blew past them on national television.
Stranger things have happened, of course. Memphis entered this regular season finale ranked No. 71 in the NCAA’S NET rankings. Over the three years since that metric began being used as a sorting tool by the NCAA tournament selection committee, there has been at least one team sent to Dayton, Ohio, for the “First
Four” play-in games with a NET ranking of 65 or higher each time.
But fair or not, they tend to be middling power conference teams with lots of wins against opponents in the top two quadrants of the NCAA’S ranking system and lots of losses in the top two quadrants – and maybe one hiccup along the way. Wichita State in 2021 is the lone exception, but it won the AAC regular season title during that Covid-impacted year.
Memphis – in addition to having just two quad one wins this season because
what was once thought to be a non conference gauntlet turned out to be much tamer through no fault of the Tigers – just finished in fifth or sixth place in the weakest version of the AAC to date.
This fate, unfortunately, has been earned. Should Memphis not salvage this in the conference tournament, it should feel bitterly disappointing to everyone who cares about the program. We’re still less than two months removed from this team being ranked among the top 10 in the country.
The loss against FAU isn’t the problem, so much as that Memphis put itself in a spot where it couldn’t really afford a loss at FAU. The Owls have lost just one game at that tiny bandbox of a gym the past two seasons, and it was senior day for a group that orchestrated the two greatest seasons in program history.
But this latest setback also reinforced how Memphis reached this perilous position, and what it will have to overcome to win four times in a row on a neutral court in Fort Worth, Texas, beginning Thursday.
The Tigers don’t win when Jahvon Quinerly doesn’t play well – and Quinerly didn’t play well until it was too late and the deficit too large Saturday.
They don’t win when they don’t turn people over and get lazy on defense – and they looked real lazy as FAU scored on 21 layups or dunks, while committing just eight turnovers.
They don’t win when they don’t share the ball and devolve too much into oneon-one play – and they finished with 14 assists on 31 made field goals as leading scorer David Jones never got comfortable.
They don’t win when they get outworked and don’t pay attention to the details – and FAU overwhelmed Memphis in second-chance points, points in the paint, fastbreak points, and bench points. Not even 16 3-pointers by the Tigers could keep this all that close after FAU asserted its will over the game with a surge to close the first half and another one to begin the second half.
“We had a really good game plan and you’ve got to match the game plan with heart and effort,” Tigers coach Penny
Hardaway said after the game. “We knew exactly who they were and what they were going to do.”
The truth is we know who these Tigers and their coach are by now, too. They’re the most maddening kind of talented, the kind capable of great feats and great frustration without much warning for what will happen from game-to-game, and even half-to-half.
And now we likely know how this will end. Either Memphis wins four games in four days to make the NCAA tournament, or it begins a long offseason full of regret about what could have (and should have) been.
You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on X: @mgiannotto