Memphis Sports: The Local View
Sorry for a local post, but enough is happening in the city I call home that it cannot be avoided.
The good:
Memphis Tigers basektball.
I was fortunate to score a ticket (and a free one at that) to the Memphis/Georgetown game yesterday. It was easily the most electric college baseketball crowd I have ever been a part of, and the noise was deafening at critical times. The Tigers have a genuine home court advantage at this point, supporting a very good basketball team. The game itself? Played at a very high level by both teams before Memphis' defense wore down and overwhelmed Georgetown. When Chris Douglas-Roberts is on his game along with Derrick Rose, Memphis will be tough to beat.
Hard not to be a part of that crowd and again despair at Memphis' being marooned in Conference USA. A parade of teams like Georgetown, Connecticut, Louisville, and the rest of the Big East through Memphis would be most welcome. Instead, scenes like yesterday are fleeting, as the realities of a parade of East Carolina, SMU, and Tulsa conference games will suck the life out of the proceedings.
The bad:
Memphis Tigers football. It is beyond me my Conference USA has six bowl tie-ins. Absolutely indefensible that a conference that plays as bad a football as C-USA does will be able to send legitimately bad teams to play one more game. And the Tigers were a legitimately bad team this year. Their reward? Yet another game against a Sunbelt Conference team having already lost in the regular season to Arkansas State and Middle Tennessee State. The outcome Friday night? Preordained as far as I was concerned. When you can't stop anyone, then for certain, you will lose. Apparently if the Tigers were adrift in the Sunbelt they would never win. If I were calling shots for Memphis, Tommy West would not have a job this morning. I'm not, so he does.
The awful/hopeful:
The Memphis Grizzlies in close games are awful. Actually, they are pretty damn awful in not-so-close games too. Another buzzer-beating loss last night, this time to the Sixers, adds to a series of gut-punch losses this year. It has reached laughable proportions. Then again, if they were not busy choking away 11-point 4th period leads, it might not come down to last second shots.
The hopeful part of the wasteland that it is NBA basketball in Memphis is Rudy Gay as he continues to make a definite leap. He's averaging 20 points a game with 6 boards and showing increased desire to be the man at the end of games. In fact, there is little question locally that the leader of the team is now Gay, as opposed to Pau Gasol. That, at the least, is something positive for a bad team to build on as it waits for its latest top five overall draft pick.
