| Big upsets in college basketball last weekend |
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| Written by Matthew Russell | |
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It was a college basketball showdown for the ages. This was the kind of game that only happens once every decade or more, and lately has only happened on tobacco road. Number one Memphis and number two Tennessee were playing for supremacy in the state of Tennessee and supremacy in the nation. The Tennessee Volunteers showed up and ended the Memphis Tigers perfect season with a 66-62 game. The atmosphere at the game was simply crazy; it felt like an NCAA tournament final four or even championship game. The game won’t have a huge impact on the tournament as baring a meltdown of historic proportions as both teams are headed for at worst a number two seed. Even so, both teams laid it out on the line like this was do or die. Out of the gate it was a wild affair; at the 10:00 minute point in the first half it was 21-23 Memphis. This game looked like it was headed for scores in the upper 80’s, but around the 8:00 minute mark the game settled back down as both teams finally took a breath. When the two teams headed into the locker room Memphis was clinging to a one point lead. In the first half, after 50 seconds had gone by, the teams had put up 7 points already, but in the second half it took that long just to get the first field goal. That lay-in by the Volunteers’ Tyler Smith gave the Vols their first lead since the 16:17 mark in the first half. For most of the second half the Tigers’ super freshman Derrick Rose show cased some of the skills that have the nation buzzing about his potential and his already amazing polished game. Rose nailed a jumper with 3:42 left to give Memphis the lead back. So the Tigers had a three point lead with only 2:19 left in the game what happened? FREE THROWS. From the 4:12 mark with the Tigers down one they shot 1-6 from the foul line. It is a fact of life in the sport of basketball if you can’t make free throws eventually you will lose because of it. With eight seconds left on the clock, the Tigers were down two and were forced to foul the Vols to stop the clock. So what was the reason Tennessee won? Free throws. In the final eight seconds of the game, the Vols were 4-4 from the line to pull out the 66-62 win. For the game Memphis shot 8-18 from the line. For the entire season Memphis pundits and even Coach John Calapari have been saying that they would make them when they needed them. Well they didn’t. When they needed them, they lost because they couldn’t make them. After the game, Calapari and some of the players said they were out hustled to lose balls and that the better team won. What no one bothered to mention is that the better free throw shooting team won. Tennessee didn’t even shoot that well from the charity stripe. They only shot 67 percent. The good news for the Vols is Memphis only shot 47 percent. The disparity in free throw shooting was the difference in the game, not getting out hustled and not one team simply being better than the other. These two teams were as evenly matched as they come and Memphis lost because they missed free throws. So this year when filling out one of those brackets for the tournament the question for me won’t be whether or not Memphis can win it all. It will be who is going to upset them. Looking around at the probable picks to be number one through four seeds in the tournament I found 7 teams I don’t really think Memphis is eight or more points better than. That is the question. Is Memphis eight points better than who ever they are playing? They will give up that many points on the free throw line almost every game. Some time in the tournament, they are either going to end up in a dog fight with a defensively superior team, or they are going to be up late in a game and the other team will foul them and reduce their chances of winning to their free throw shooting percentage. As a team Memphis shoots only 58.5 percent from the free throw line. |
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