Scouting Memphis

as someone who has watched a ton of memphis and texas teams this year, i will say he is correct on his players reports. however, there are a few things that he got a little wrong on the team report. A)the best part of our defense is our screen switching. that causes a lot of problems for opposing guards. Converesely, teams with athletic big guys give us a problem on the give and go. there is a matchup yall can take advantage of. B)we aren't undisciplined on defense. Actually, we are very disciplined--especially on the perimeter. Augustine and Abrams need to stay patient and wait for the correct matchup off a screen or a double team. it wont always be there, but it will come. C)on offense, CDR only "dominates" the basketball in the last few seconds of the shot clock. at that point, his "old man tricks"--as derrick rose calls it--allows him a shot at the basket 95% of the time. the key for yall is to deny him the ball. however, that is hard to do in a zone which most teams play against us.

My summarized keys to the game are gonna be tempo and offensive rebounding. if we can speed up the game by turning yall over or controlling the defensive boards, then the Tigers have a great chance. If yall can limit tunrovers and control the boards, then yall probably win.

good luck to yall and have a good night.
 
Texas isn't going to be controlling the boards against Memphis.

My preference is to just go ahead and get Derrick Rose in foul trouble early, and keep him on the bench most of the game. Conversely, Augustin needs to be able to stay on the floor.

Texas is really tough to turnover --- statistically, the hardest team in the country. If Memphis is able to turn over Texas consistently, I'd say it's a good bet the Longhorns are doomed, since that's a critical component of UT's success.

The keys for me are which wins out --- athleticism versus smarts. Memphis has a better matchup at pretty much every position, and their bench is a whole heck of a lot more productive than UT's.

They win by turning games into a version of street ball. They pressure on the ball and jump into the passing lanes. They continuously attack the basket on offense, emphasizing beating their defenders one on one --- which they're very good at. They pound the glass.

Texas needs to be patient on offense and defense. One of the things that is most remarkable about DJ is that he rarely picks up his dribble. He's going to poke and prod the Memphis defense for 25+ seconds every possession if he has to. Texas will spread the floor, either allowing driving lanes or room for cutters to the basket, and if one of the shooters gets an open look from 3 point land, they'll let it fly.

It's going to be awfully tough for Texas to win this game with another 33% percentage from 3 outing like against Stanford. I'd love to see everyone go insane, especially early, like they did against Kansas and Miami. It's going to put pressure on the Memphis players to put up early shots in an effort to match UT's scoring, and it'll spread the floor even more, enabling Texas to take advantage of lanes to the basket for Augustin/Mason and maybe James.

On defense, the Horns are going to have to be patient with the 2-3. I don't mind seeing them play man for limited minutes, but Mason is the only one with even a remote chance of guarding Rose, and Texas cannot afford to have Mason in early foul trouble. Abrams has guarded taller players all year, so face guarding Chris Douglas-Roberts won't be anything new. That would leave Augustin on Antonio Anderson, which isn't exactly an ideal matchup, but that's the best Texas could do.

And of course, that would leave Atchley on Dozier and James on Dorsey --- or vice versa --- which isn't exactly a whole lot of fun to contemplate either.

If Memphis does a great job of shooting over the zone, or attacking the middle of the zone with guys like Dozier, Taggart, CDR, Anderson, et al, or they beat the crap out of the Longhorns on offensive boards, it's probably going to be a long game.

However, the one thing about this Texas team is that they can score in bunches. If they get hot from behind the arc, no lead is safe.

The other thing is, if Memphis has a big lead in the 2nd half, Barnes isn't going to wait for the 1 or 2 minute mark to start fouling to extend the game. I've seen him start fouling at the 8 minute mark at times until Texas can get a lead down to within 10.

As far as foul trouble, it was a huge key against Stanford that Texas substituted the way they did early on, so the Longhorns went into half time with none of their starters picking up 2 fouls. Any of the bench players --- Wangmene/Johnson/Pittman/Chapman --- can pick up 3 or even more, but once those starters begin sitting for extended periods of time, things can go to hell in a handbasket real fast.

Alternatively, getting Robin Lopez in foul trouble was huge. Memphis has a lot more athletes, and a lot more ways of beating an opponent than Stanford did. Dorsey is even more susceptible to foul trouble than either of the Lopez twins, but really Texas would need to get either Dozier or Taggart in trouble inside as well to affect the Memphis gameplan much.

The main thing that would affect Memphis is to either put CDR or Rose on the bench --- preferably Rose. Alternatively, just like with Stanford, it's critical all five of UT's starters --- Atchley/James/Mason/Abrams/Augustin --- stay out of foul trouble as much as possible. Let the bench players soak up the fouls to whatever extent they can.

It's a chance to go to the Final Four. I'm pumped!
 
Memphis has the ability to dominate Texas on the boards, Texas needs to keep the rebounds close. One area that Memphis is weak is 3 point shooting, Tenn it hurt them. They shot lights out from behind the line to start the game but in the 2nd half couldn't hit. Tenn withstood the storm and pulled out the win, I hope the Texas game looks similiar to the Tenn game.

Another point is that not every Memphis player is a poor free throw shooter. Rose, CDR, and few others are good shooters, but they have some very poor shooters Dorsey is the worst, he is probably 40%. Against Mich State they shot a respectable % on FTs.
 
No one on their team shoots for 70% from the free throw stripe for the year. It's not accurate to say anyone on there is a good free throw shooter. It is true that some are worse than others, however.

They did hit almost 75% of their free throws against Michigan State, so good for them, and CDR was 11 for 12 from the line. We'll see if they can duplicate that performance.

Memphis hits over 35% of their 3 point shots. Given other aspects of their game, I guess it's fair to say 3 point shooting isn't the strength some other parts of their team are, but 35% is a semi respectable number.

They sure shoot a lot of them. They shoot more than Texas from behind the arc, which is tough to accomplish. Looking over their stats, what sticks out is how many 3 point shots some of their really bad shooters shoot.

That goes back to Memphis being an undisciplined team. However, Texas really needs Memphis to hit at their 3 point average or below, and for Texas to hit at their 3 point average or above. If Memphis is hot from behind the arc most of the night, it negates one of the advantages I'm counting on as a Texas fan to hopefully pull off the upset, especially since Texas will be in the 2-3 zone most of the game, so Memphis should be able to get plenty of open looks from outside.
 
This is a game where our lack of backcourt depth is really going to hurt. Asking our guards to defend, score, and stay out of foul trouble for 40 minutes against Memphis is a daunting task.

Zoning will help some to keep our legs fresh but I don't know if it will be enough. Also I'm not sure if Barnes will utilize the zone as much as predicted, we didn't use much against Stanford.

I'm wondering if we might play a few minutes with a 2 guard line-up and James at the 3. Anybody else think this is a possibility?
 
If we play damion james at the 3 then you almost have to put AJ Abrams on the bench. You cannot have those two out there at the guard position and no justin mason to my way of thinking.
 
Too bad they aren't wearing blue today- we historically seem to play our best basketball of the year against KU- which ususally almost always doubles as our toughest game of the year.

Unfortunately, we rarely win these games, but they are usually outstanding, well played games that remind me of everything I love about basketball.

If we were to lose a game like that I would have no problem getting bounced in the tourney. Sometimes you just have to tip your hat to the other guy.

This is the first team I really feel like should beat us in the tourney in some time.

It wasn't embarassing by any means to lose to USC last year, or LSU the year before- but by no means was it expected.

I think we've been favored in just about every tourney exit under Barnes (at least favored seed wise anyway).

If we play great and get beat by a better team that will be the most satisfying tourney, for me, as a UT fan since the TJ ford final 4 team.

All that being said lets go out and bomb their asses from deep and run them out of the gym.
 
Barnes drew some local radio squawk about having lost to a lower seed the last five years in the tournament. That's largely the way it works when you have a top-four seed most of the time.

At least Barnes isn't Bo Ryan, who has yet to beat a seed higher than eight.

Given my choice, I'll take the first problem.
 
I hope that didn't sound harsh Bob- I wasn't meaning it to. I don't look at any of those losses as horrible or embarassing losses, or things I'm irritated about- it just is a fact of life.

5 sweet 16's in 7 years and 3 elite 8's in 6 years is pretty dad gum cool. Only the #1 seed is favored to get to the final 4 out of a region and we did that when we were a 1. No arguments from me, but 2 years ago did hurt losing to LSU. If it was Duke that would have given us a pantsing in the regional final that would have been A-OK with me, but when the coonasses knocked them out it really opened up the bracket for us, when we had all the parts to a great team. Sad not to get it done there.
 
Nah, was just adding the fact that some people pay attention to these things. The only game in the last five years where they got beat that I really thought they should have won was Xavier in '04, but it's not like I expected them to beat Duke in the next game, because I didn't.

I don't think that losing to a lower seed as Texas has is necessarily a sign of a flaw in Rick Barnes's resume, especially when the past five years were arguably the best five years in Texas basketball history.
 
once again, most of yalls scouting reports are pretty good. the only thing is some yall continue to call us undisciplined. if that were the case, we would have 10 charge calls against us a game and average25 turnovers a game while running the DDM or if you prefer the AASAA. minus dorsey, we are a very disciplined team. you wont get rose or cdr in foul trouble, but you might get dorsey and dozier. rose will guard DJ most of the game and antonio anderson will guard Abrams. you can do your matchups from there
 
Being disciplined isn't about avoiding charges or turning the ball over necessarily. It's about shot selection, and being patient within the offense.

Some head coaches prefer being controlling, some coaches prefer their players being loose and confident. Calipari is the latter. The down side to being controlling is that players are often hesitant and look over their shoulders too much. The upside is that they don't take bad shots. The up side to "letting the players play" is that they don't play tentative --- the downside is that they don't always make smart decisions.

Memphis is the latter. As a Texas fan, I hope it bites them in the butt. I also wouldn't mind seeing some unforced turnovers.

Texas really needs to win the turnover margin, because I'm expecting Memphis to gain extra possessions off the boards. Taking care of the ball just a little better than Memphis does will work to UT's advantage.
 
SL- I don't think we can win just taking care of the ball a little better than memphis- I think we need a 2-1 tournover ratio advantage b/c I see us getting killed on the offensive glass- we've got to get those extra possessions from somewhere and a 10-8 tournover margin- or something like that, is not going to cut it imo.

Unless we hit 50% or something from downtown- which wouldn't be a total shock to me either.
 
You all are giving Memphis too much credit. They board well and are athletic, but they make lots of mistakes. We play better against such teams than we do against big, slow, methodical teams like those in the Big 10. When Tennessee played out of control, we dominated them.
 
Uninformed- I hope you are right- I just don't happen to think that you are.

Memphis has legit guards this year, and Rose is the real deal, as is hyphen- who has really come into their own.

In years past I have agreed with your take on memphis- this year I think Rose gives them what they've been missing.

I hope you are right and I'm wrong. I'm certainly not saying we cannot win (in fact I picked us in my bracket- just that we need to either shoot really well from distance, rebound better than I expect or really win the turnover battle. Or, probably really at least 2 out of those 3.
 
I hate being right sometimes...

What is funny is that the one thing we did just fine (hold our own on the boards) I really didn't think we had any chance at. I absolutely thought we could get hot from distance or really win the tournover battle but we did not come close to doing either.
 
Memphis has a great chance to get to at least the final 4 again next year. Heard they are in line to get 2 or 3 Five star players?
 
Memphis loses Derrick Rose, Joey Dorsey, and the Byron Eaton lookalike, Andre Allen. They might lose Chris Douglas-Roberts. They lose all those guys I don't think they're a Final Four contender unless they catch some breaks in the tournament.

They're in on two of the recruits Texas is still after for 2008, Tyreke Evans and Devin Ebanks. Two of their signees have academic hurdles to overcome.

They'll be plenty good as long as Calipari sticks around, though, that's for sure.
 
This year is Memphis' best chance at a championship.
Rose is key to their sucess this year. When he leaves he will be hard to replace. Even if CDR stays it will be a difficult for the Tigers to match this years team. Texas on the other hand has a chance to be even better next year.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Weekly Prediction Contest

* Predict HORNS-AGGIES *
Sat, Nov 30 • 6:30 PM on ABC

Recent Threads

Prediction Results Threads

2024 Schedules

Back
Top