I GUESS WE SHOULD START TAKING MEMPHIS SERIOUSLY NOW

by WCT, The Ship of Fools

When they opened up in the preseason AP top 5, I scoffed. When they dominated Conference USA, I ignored. When they lost to Tennessee, I felt vindicated. When they destroyed everyone in the conference tournament, I questioned. When they ran through their region in the Tournament, I shrugged. Saturday, they embarrassed UCLA and tonight play in the National Championship game. I'm beginning to think that maybe this Memphis club might be for real.

I'm half-joking, but I can't be the only one that is guilty of this type of thinking, right?

I guess I am a bit old school in this case. Memphis does not come from a so-called power conference, and the last champion to come from outside the power conferences was UNLV in 1990. Not only that, but they don't play the most aesthetically pleasing brand of basketball (they barely shot 40% from the field Saturday in beating the Bruins) and were one of the worst free throw shooting teams of the more that 300 schools in D-1. They just don't, in my opinion, have the look of a National Championship team. Not only that, but they are coached by John Freaking Calipari of all people. Can you even imagine Calipari holding the trophy, or cutting down the nets? Does he seem like a National Championship caliber coach?

And the people that have defended them have used the same weak arguments:

Their conference was weak but they played the toughest non-conference schedule in the country.

Yes, the 10 or so games they played out-of-conference were tougher than the 10 or so that everyone else played, but what about the roughly 25 they played against conference opponents? Its easy to get up for a game here or a game there, but when you play in a tough conference, and are consistently tested every game, its much more difficult.

They make their free throws when it counts

Yes, when we look at the small five game sample of their NCAA Tournament, we might even call the Tigers an above-average-to-good free throw shooting team. But how can we ignore the much larger sample size of the 34 games they played before the NCAA Tournament began? If their next game is a close one and comes down to foul shooting, how confident can Memphis fans be?

Yet here they are, in the game, 40 minutes away from a championship. Maybe its just me being stubborn, but I just cannot wrap my head around the idea of Memphis winning. Not because I don't think they can beat Kansas, but because I refuse to believe that this Memphis Tigers team is the best team in the nation. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.