Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

Three Lessons from Memphis Tigers’ Loss to Kansas

First of all, any honest assessment of last night’s thriller in St. Louis should include the following: Kansas may not be the world-beater so many prognosticators considered them. Xavier Henry is a fine player in an NBA-ready body. But I didn’t see the kind of difference-maker I expected last night. Maybe just an off night.

There are bad losses, good losses now and then, and — most rare — losses on which a season can be built. Taking the top-ranked team in the country to the buzzer before Thanksgiving may be a season-builder.

Three lessons we should take from the Tigers’ narrow loss:

1. This collection of stepchildren won’t be intimidated. The program’s star power took a beating over the offseason (part of that beating was wearing number 1 for Kansas). The team has a coach too young to run for president. “Just wait till next year,” when the country’s top recruiting class arrives.

lessons.png

But the 2009-10 Tigers have a season to play. And try telling seniors Willie Kemp, Doneal Mack, and Pierre Henderson-Niles about the 2010 class. Last night would have been an easy early-season throwaway game. Come out fighting, but then fall back on damage control when things get ugly (like a 10-point Jayhawk lead). Instead, the Tigers came up with big defensive stops, hit clutch shots as the clock wound down, and gave themselves a shot to win at the buzzer. The Tigers will have some duds this year, but they won’t play on a bigger stage until March.

Categories
News

Tigers Fall Short in Upset Bid Over KU

The Memphis Tigers battled toe-to-toe all night with the top-ranked Jayhawks, but fell one shot short. Frank Murtaugh has the scoop.

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

Memphis Tigers Fall (Barely) to Top-Ranked Kansas

Three inches. That’s an educated guess on how close the Tigers came to knocking off top-ranked Kansas tonight. Had Elliot Williams’ three-point attempt at the buzzer been a bit more shy — by thaaaaat much — Memphis earns its greatest upset in 89 years of basketball. Instead, the Tigers walk off the court in St. Louis disappointed with a 57-55 defeat.

MemphisTigers_logo_paint.jpg

Remarkable first half. Despite converting only two field goals over the last nine minutes of the half and missing 12 of 14 three-point attempts, the U of M was down only six points against the consensus number-one team in the country. (Consider: had the Tigers made merely 25 percent of their three point attempts in the half, the score would have been tied.)

Just as eye-opening was the way seven Memphis players were able to trade punches against a Kansas team that went 10 deep, with two All-Americans (Cole Aldrich and Sherron Collins) and a freshman phenom (Xavier Henry) in its starting lineup. A strength to this year’s collection of underdogs may well be its team defense (witness the six Kansas turnovers over the game’s first six minutes). Josh Pastner has an undersized team, but it’s not lacking for quickness or athleticism. Kansas players not named Aldrich made but 13 of 33 shots.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

No Ordinary Joe!: Ford Elected Interim County Mayor as Votes Change Sides

Interim county mayor-elect Joe Ford

  • JB
  • Interim county mayor-elect Joe Ford

Criminal Court Judge Otis Higgs, who in past decades several times sought the office of city mayor, made the kind of lighthearted, warm-hearted, and stout-hearted speech that his friends from several decades of public life would have expected of him; yet when it was all over the unquestionably deserving public servant, ready to serve as a temporary county mayor during what he plans to be his retirement year, once again failed to get the bride, the bridesmaid, or the rice thrown at the wedding.

No rice and no dice either for John Vergos, the former Memphis city councilman who sat hopefully in the county building auditorium last week and did so again Tuesday. Nor for Jack Sammons, still serving as acting CAO for departed county mayor A C Wharton, now residing as the newly elected Memphis mayor over at City Hall across the way.

Nor for county commissioner J.W. Gibson or his once-and-future colleague, commissioner and acting mayor Joyce Avery, who once again let themselves be nominated and took front row seats, prepared to wait it out the as their fellow commissioners voted again on appointing an interim Shelby county mayor.

Only there was no wait this time Nothing like the marathon 24 separate ballots that took place Monday of last week as Gibson and commissioner Joe Ford deadlocked over-and-over again with repeat vote totals of 5-to-5, interrupted only by the occasional spurt of tentative votes for someone else — Avery or commissioner George Flinn or county CAO Jim Huntzicker. But the stalemate never broke.

It did this time around. On the second ballot, commissioner James Harvey shifted away from Gibson and, in the manner of the talented Gridiron Show thespian he is, delivered a properly cadenced and dramatic apologia for reversing himself, all in the name of ending the commission’s ordeal, then cast his vote for commissioner Joe Ford, and — Bingo! There was your new county mayor for the next several months, the first member of his politically illustrious family to hold the executive title of mayor.

And there was celebration and jubilation all around, as much because there would be no ordeal like last week’s as because of Ford’s victory over Gibson. The palpable mood of deliverance would doubtless have been there had the nod gone to Gibson — who, as if anticipating the outcome, had earlier, in obligatory remarks making the case for himself, had pointedly, almost concessively, expressed gratitude merely for having been nominated.

Also having an earlier moment had been commissioner Steve Mulroy, a dedicated Ford supporter (and no mean thespian himself), who also seemed to have seen what was coming, making a speech renouncing whatever hopes he might privately have nursed of being a fallback mayoral choice.

Standing off to the side of the post-selection hoopla, eschewing any dramatics whatsoever, was commissioner Henri Brooks, who had really been the decision-maker on Tuesday. It was Brooks, an immovable Gibson vote last week, who had made the first break toward Ford, from the very first ballot. All Harvey had done was follow through on the implied offer he had made during last week’s session to cross over if he had company.

Why did Brooks provide the occasion? “I just listened to my constituents,” was her only explanation.

When Ford made an impromptu acceptance speech, he promised as mayor to institute the same kinds of “task forces” on this or that governmental issue as he had while serving as the commission’s chairman a few seasons back. And he could hardly be blamed for expressing a bit of resentment at the public venting that had been given his several personal problems — mainly financial — during this last week.

Ford advised his listeners to believe “very little” of what they saw on television and “nothing” they read in “the newspaper.”

Ah well, now that this showdown is over, maybe there’ll be an easing up of the odd polarization on the commission — one that owes nothing to either ideology or political party but rather to the kind of personal motives and ad hoc alliances you could expect to find on any organized body of people. Maybe commissioner Mike Carpenter, a co-chair of Memphis mayor Wharton’s transition team and the subject of nonstop rumors that he’s City Hall-bound himself will feel free now to make his move.

As for Ford, he maintained a poker face, even in triumph.. That eased up for good only when somebody remarked to him that, after all those years of people conjecturing about there being a “Mayor Ford,” meaning his brother Harold Sr., a former congressman now doing high-stakes lobbying from a base in Florida, there is one such. And this Mayor-elect Ford is named Joe.

At that thought he finally smiled.

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

The Eyes of Glenn Beck

Becks peepers

  • Beck’s peepers

This holiday season Fox news personality Glenn Beck is bringing back his live stage show, The Christmas Sweater. That’s right, Glenn Beck has a live stage show and for the low, low price of $20 local Beckheads can catch a big screen simulcast of the event at Memphis’ Cinema Paradiso on Thursday, December 3rd at 7:00 p.m. To promote The Christmas Sweater—a Return to Redemption, the Conservative talker has created the following trailer, which is one of the most accidentally hilarious things I’ve seen in a long, long time.

Categories
Daily Photo Special Sections

preston shannon

Categories
Beyond the Arc Sports

Introducing Jamaal Tinsley

Jamaal Tinsley: Not the veteran free agent guard Griz fans were expecting to see.

  • Jamaal Tinsley: Not the veteran free agent guard Griz fans were expecting to see.

Grizzlies fans won’t see Allen Iverson on the FedExForum court — at least not in a Grizzlies uniform, but will get a chance to see another controversial veteran guard whom no other team has been clamoring to sign in the form of Jamaal Tinsley, the former Indiana Pacer who is likely to make his Grizzlies debut Wednesday night against the Los Angeles Clippers.

Let’s take a look at Tinsley, past, present, and future:

Glory Days: Jamaal Tinsley’s been a non-entity for so long that it’s easy to forget how good he was not so long ago. Here’s an excerpt from John Hollinger’s last Pro Basketball Forecast book previewing the 2005-2006 season:

With Indiana’s three best scorers suspended, Tinsley shifted his energies from setting up others to scoring himself. He raised his 40-minute scoring average by six points and more than tripled his rate of free-throw attempts… Also, Tinsley has improved as a shooter, making 37 percent on three-pointers for the second straight season after struggling with the jumper early in his career.

Defensively, Tinsley is one of the best guards in basketball. He has good quickness and fast hands that plucked two steals a game. Moreover, he’s a good rebounder for a guard and is big enough to defend shooting guards if the situation requires.

Overall, he’s on the cusp of becoming an all-star point guard if he can ever stay healthy. Tinsley has played only 92 games the past two seasons and has limped through Indiana’s playoff defeats in two straight postseasons. While much of the attention will be on Ron Artest, Tinsley is arguably a bigger key to Indiana’s championship hopes. If he’s in one piece in June, the Pacers will be tough to beat.

Categories
Opinion

Golf and Dope

Ever since he turned pro in 1995, Memphis golfer Doug Barron hoped to make a name for himself. This month he did, as the first person suspended under the PGA Tour’s anti-doping rules.

Last week, attorneys for Barron and the PGA argued his case in federal court in Memphis for more than three hours. On Monday, U.S. magistrate Tu Pham denied Barron’s request for a temporary restraining order that would have allowed him to compete this week in a qualifying tournament in Houston.

Strict liability strikes again.

“You are strictly liable whenever a prohibited substance is in your body,” says the first page of the PGA’s anti-doping manual.

Although Barron said he took testosterone and a beta-blocker drug for several years under a doctor’s care for treatment of a medical condition, the PGA Tour refused to give him a “therapeutic use exemption” (TUE), and Pham declined to give him a mulligan. Barron is the second Memphis athlete to make ESPN this year for alleged cheating. The first, of course, was former University of Memphis basketball star Derrick Rose, whose bogus SAT test cost the Tigers their 2007-2008 victories. (The university has appealed the NCAA’s ruling.)

By ordinary standards, Barron, 40 years old, is an excellent golfer. By PGA standards, he is a journeyman battling to qualify for a tour card in the PGA’s pressure-packed “Q-School.” In June he got a break: a sponsor’s exemption into the St. Jude Classic. He played two rounds, shooting 9-over-par 149 and failing to make the cut but not before he was drug tested. Barron did not dispute the positive test results and admitted to continued use of testosterone and propranolol. After again reviewing his medical records, the PGA Tour suspended him for one year.

With that, the relatively unknown Barron joined fellow athletes such as track star Marion Jones, cyclist Floyd Landis, and baseball player Manny Ramirez, all of whom were penalized for illegal drug use. Attorney Jeff Rosenblum argued that Barron is “disabled” under the Americans With Disabilities Act, because low testosterone levels “impair a major life activity,” namely intimacy with his wife. The beta-blocker, he said, was for treatment of a racing heart, and Barron’s doctor was trying to wean him off of it.

“This is an outrageous penalty when you compare it to baseball or football,” Rosenblum said.

Not so, said Rich Young, the PGA Tour’s lawyer. The rules are the rules, and Barron signed off on them and broke them.

“This isn’t fun or easy for anybody, but it’s the right thing for a sport to do,” Young said.

The drugs are banned because they’re performance enhancers that increase strength, speed recovery, and calm nerves. Young described a situation where a golfer needs to make up one stroke on the 18th hole and can either play it safe or go for the green on his second shot to get the last qualifying spot. On such decisions, tour cards are earned, and fortunes are made. Steve Stricker came through Q-School in 2005 and earned $6 million this year. And Memphian Shaun Micheel came out of nowhere to win the PGA Championship in 2003. Micheel’s name came up in court. Last year, he got a medical exemption to use testosterone. He and Barron are friends and are the same age. Micheel told ESPN.com last week that the PGA’s drug-testing process “nearly drove me out of the game” and made him question whether it was worth it to play pro golf. Young said he wouldn’t talk about Micheel “but if the facts had been the same, then his TUE request would have been turned down.”

Barron’s wife and this reporter were the only spectators at the hearing. The case has attracted international attention. Pham took three days to issue his 33-page ruling after first saying he might have it in a day. He called it “a close case.”

“If Barron is permitted to play in the second qualifying stage (Q-School), it could raise substantial public policy concerns regarding the enforcement of anti-doping policies in professional sports,” he wrote in his conclusion.
Rosenblum hinted that he will probe the inner workings of the PGA Tour through the discovery process if the case goes to trial. It has been assigned to U.S. district judge Samuel H. Mays. In golf parlance, Barron went for the green instead of laying up, and his ball landed in the water. Now he has a year to think about it.

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

“Assassination Sandwich”

Happened upon this eatmedaily.com post on an artist’s wax sculptures depicting images of assassins and their victims on bologna sandwiches. “King/Ray” is pictured below:

tibitibi-king-ray.jpg

Categories
News

Would You Dope?

After I told one of my regular sports partners I had been covering the story of the Memphis pro golfer suspended by the PGA Tour for doping violations, he looked at me and smiled, “You know where I can get some testosterone?” He was kidding, I think.

Read more in John Branston’s Get Memphis Moving blog.