Depth defines Tigers
Memphis men’s basketball coach John Calipari was on a 20-minute conference call Tuesday morning and only a couple of times did the conversation turn to Tulsa, the team the Tigers defeated Wednesday, or Gonzaga, which visits the FedEx Forum on Saturday.
That’s fine with Calipari, who has never had difficulty filling up reporters’ notebooks. Most of the questions centered on his team’s No. 1 ranking, the national perception of Conference USA and the Tigers – all topics he’s quite comfortable addressing. Memphis has reached No. 1 with an 18-0 record that includes only one victory by fewer than 10 points.
“I’ve been saying from the beginning, you can tell they like each other,” Calipari said. “About three weeks ago, (guard) Antonio Anderson said, ‘I wish you’d stop saying that,’ and I was stunned in a team meeting. I said, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘Because we love each other.’
“And then I said we may have lightning in a bottle here. I didn’t say that out loud, but that’s what I thought.”
Memphis employs a 10-player rotation – all averaging between 10.6 and 27.8 minutes – that often wears down opponents. The Tigers’ winning margin is 22.6 points, nearly 12 of that coming in the second halves of games.
“It’s one thing to get a bunch of really talented players,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said. “To get them to play that hard … this team really, really plays together. They look like they truly like each other. Obviously, there are a lot of guys with immediate futures with paychecks. For them to play that way, he deserves all the credit.”
In an 85-71 win against then-No. 5 Georgetown, Memphis was down eight late in the first half before storming back. In the Tigers’ closest call, they trailed USC by five at half, but won in overtime.
“They had contributions up and down the line,” Georgetown coach John Thompson III said in an Associated Press article. “That’s what good teams do.”
Calipari said Andre Allen may be the “best backup point guard in the country. If there’s a better big man coming off the bench than Shawn Taggart, I’ve got to see the guy. Willie Kemp is the best utility guard coming off the bench … that there is.”
The chemistry is obvious between starters and reserves, Calipari said. “Our bench has scored 29 points a game. The starters will stay out of the game. They’ll let the bench play more.”
Few and Calipari said they hope the series continues, possibly for four more years. Memphis has won the last two seasons, including last year’s overtime thriller in the Spokane Arena.
“It’s been great for both programs,” Few said. “I think John kind of stumbled upon a good idea to kind of mix it into the league season.”
Gonzaga, which returns home to entertain Portland on Monday, has only met the No. 1-ranked team once before, falling to Cincinnati and eventual No. 1 draft pick Kenyon Martin 75-68 in Cleveland in 1999.