The Tigers held an opponent under 20 points for the first half for the fourth time this season, en route to a waxing of UCF. Frank Murtaugh has the story.
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Month: February 2012
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Tony Allen’s Mid-Season Evaluation
Chris Herrington assesses Tony Allen today in his series of Grizzlies mid-term grades.
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Tigers 84, UCF 55
Let’s go ahead and get this over with: Tonight’s Tiger victory was ’Spoon-fed.
On an evening when Wesley Witherspoon and Preston Laird were honored as departing seniors, Memphis avenged a January loss to UCF by eviscerating the Knights in front of 17,784 raucous fans at FedExForum. (Even with a late tip-off on Tuesday night, it was the second-largest crowd of the season.) The win improves the Tigers’ record to 22-8 and clinches at least a tie for the Conference USA regular-season championship (the program’s first since 2009). Memphis (12-3 in C-USA) can win the league outright with a victory at Tulsa Saturday.
For the fourth time this season, the Tigers held an opponent under 20 points in the first half, taking a 33-18 lead as time expired on a three-pointer from the top of the arc by, you guessed it, Wesley Witherspoon. (It was the only three-pointer made in a combined 13 attempts for the two teams before halftime.)
- Larry Kuzniewski
- The Laird and Witherspoon families
After the break, things got silly. The Tigers went on a 30-11 run over a ten-minute stretch to take a 76-38 lead with more than five minutes left to play. What was supposed to be a nail-biter between a pair of 20-win teams turned into a freestyle exhibition, the kind a home crowd might expect in mid-November, not so much in late February.
Will Barton led the Tigers with 18 points and grabbed 11 rebounds for his 10th double-double of the season, but his first since January 14th. The sophomore candidate for C-USA Player of the Year added four assists and four blocked shots in 31 minutes of action.
Joe Jackson dished out a career-high 10 assists and played a career-high 37 minutes, in part because Antonio Barton sat out the second half with an ankle sprain. (Barton’s status for Saturday’s game is undetermined.) Tarik Black — leading C-USA in field-goal percentage — hit seven of his eight shots and finished with 14 points in 19 minutes. After the game, Black described the recipe for tonight’s blowout.
“It was all about defense,” said Black. “It led to some fast-break buckets, and that’s what it takes to win games.” As for his ever-growing impact with the ball in his hands, Black acknowledged the twin elements to his team peaking offensively. “I’m playing off of instinct now. If I feel like I can score it, I’ll do it. If not, I’ll pass it back out and wait for another opportunity. If you don’t have an inside game, the outside game can’t show, because the defense can guard the perimeter and not worry about the inside. With a team like ours, when you can attack with both inside and outside, it’s really an impossible task to stop.”
- Larry Kuzniewski
- Tarik Black
Relishing his senior spotlight, Witherspoon scored 15 points — his second-highest total of the season and most since the opening game in November — and added seven rebounds and four steals. “That’s my guy,” said Black. “I love him to death. We won’t have any bad memories about tonight. He’ll go home happy and hang out with his family.”
With the game in hand and just under four minutes to play, Laird entered to the crowd’s delight. The Germantown High School alum hit a free throw and short jumper for his first points since his sophomore season. “I’m just as happy for him,” said Black. “He doesn’t get as much playing time, but he’s just as good a teammate. We’re going to study tomorrow; he’s going to help me out on a test. That’s teamwork.”
Sophomore guard Chris Crawford added 11 points, five rebounds, and five assists to the stat box. He was all smiles after the party atmosphere of what amounts to a revenge win, but pointed to the importance of what remains for his team with postseason play looming. “The last time we played them, they hurt us, and stormed the court,” said Crawford. “We had to come out hard tonight. It’s like a dream come true, playing in front of 17,000 or 18,000 fans. It’s a great feeling when your team is in rhythm like that. Saturday [at Tulsa], it’s an early game [tip-off at 11 a.m.], and we haven’t been real good in early games. We gotta get some rest and come out with a lot of energy like we did tonight.”
Graduates from the city’s Leadership Academy gathered Tuesday morning to brainstorm ideas on how to attract and retain young professionals.
The “Millennials’ Memphis” event was held at the Memphis Bioworks Foundation auditorium. After the brainstorming session, the ideas were presented to Memphis Mayor A C Wharton.
The 100 graduates, dubbed “Leadership Fellows,” broke into seven small groups to come up with answers for three questions: What values do you believe matter most in Memphis’ future? What can we promote about our city today to make it attractive to visitors and get them to come back? What do we need to revolutionize in order to be that city of choice in the future?
Groups determined economic development, empowerment, innovation, eco-friendliness, having a strong art community, and urban renewal as the values that mattered most for the city’s future.
Cost of living, cultural arts, and being a soulful city were among the ideas touted to make the city attractive to visitors.
Responses to how to revolutionize the city included partnering and investing, achieving positive promotion of Memphis, and progressively changing the current void in education and transportation.
“I wish I could say man, this really shocks me. All I can say is that this really affirms what you will see embodied in the priorities that we set out for our state and city,” Wharton said, after hearing the presentation.
He mentioned educational enlightenment, investing in the city, and sharing more of its history to visitors as significant things on his list to tackle.
Rod Moses, director of fellows for the Leadership Academy, said the event allowed leadership fellows “to share their perspectives, ideas and advice with the mayor” on how to move the city forward.
“For the mayor, it’s an opportunity to receive a perspective that comes from a generation where ideas are fresh,” Moses said at the event. “It helps to fulfill the vision that he has. He’s the type of person that leaves no stone unturned, so for him to hear from this young generation, it just helps to fulfill the vision that he has for Memphis to be a city of choice.”
Nancy Coffee, president and CEO of the Leadership Academy, said Memphis is the perfect city for a person who seeks to make a difference.
“One thing that is unique about Memphis is that we’re a city of great challenge, and we’re a city of great access,” Coffee said. “We have the challenges of poverty, of crime, and potentially an education system that is in reform. All of those become opportunities for people in this generation who truly have a heart for making a difference. This city, Memphis, is the city for all of us who want to serve, who want to make a difference, who want to not move but improve the city and where we’re going.”
- LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
- Tony Allen has been back on his grind for the Grizzlies this season.
Grizzlies fans should be pleased with what they’ve gotten from Tony Allen so far this season. His breakout season a year ago, at age 29, had all the makings of a classic “fluke rule” season, with regression to the mean likely. But the now-iconic Allen has retained most of what made him an impact player in his first season with the team.
Now established in the starting line-up after a yo-yo of an inaugural Grizzlies campaign, Allen’s minutes have boosted from 20.8 a game last season to 26.3 this season and he’s again been one of the league’s very best perimeter defenders.
After putting up a historic steal rate — 4.14 per 48 minutes — last season, Allen’s come back to earth a little, but his 3.47 per 48 is still best in the NBA among players averaging at least 15 minutes a game. And, again, Allen is the catalyst of a team defense that leads the NBA in both steals and opponent turnovers, with the starting perimeter trio of Allen (sixth), Mike Conley (first), and Rudy Gay (11th) all among the Top 11 in steals per game. Additionally, Allen is fifth among scoring guards in blocks per game, continues to mix shutdown one-on-one defense (memorably “turning the water off” on Houston’s Kevin Martin at FedExForum) with sixth-sense team defense (where he sometimes seems to be guarding no one in particular but is, in fact, guarding the entire other team).
Together, Marc Gasol and Allen have been the inside/outside anchors for a near-elite defense, one whose 10th overall ranking in defensive efficiency might might sell them short given that the team’s first-half schedule was heavy with games against elite offenses — 13 of 34 games against teams in the Top 7 in offensive efficiency. (The Griz will play current Top 7 offenses eight times in their remaining 32 games.)
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“Hurt Village” Hits Off-Broadway
Memphian (and Craigmont grad) Katori Hall’s play, Hurt Village, opens off Broadway. Chris Davis has a report and videos.
MCA’s newest exhibition in Rust Hall’s main gallery showcases the work of Kendall Carter, Orly Cogan, Margaret Evangeline and Mark Newport. Cross Currents explores the expectations of gender with accepted stereotypes illuminated through the art of these four contemporary artists in an effort to challenge the traditional roles men and women play in society.
- Margaret Evangeline
- Britannia
“I have been aware of Mark Newport and Orly Cogan’s work for a long time now and it struck me that both were working in ways that were against gendered expectations – men should not knit and women should make pretty embroidered articles for domestic consumption. I looked for two more artists to balance the show, Margaret Evangeline because her metal paintings are composed with gunshots and Kendall Carter because his works assimilate every day objects and question the boundaries of art and design,” says Jennifer Sargent, Associate Professor and Director of Exhibitions at MCA.
Contradictions in subject and form are inherent to the works, although not overt, as most people identify masculinity within the context of a heroic type, tough and unfeeling, while textiles and decorative arts are generally ascribed to the feminine ideal, soft and sweet, flowing with compassion.
- Orly Cogan
- Natural Habitat
However, Newport captures the male form (including the notably brooding and mysterious Batman) with a variety of quirky, full-body, knit suits. Evangeline’s works inversely transform luminous, often reflective, rigid surfaces into violent canvases shot through with different calibers of guns — in some cases softening the outward blast with glimpses of a delicate motif on ceramic to fully realize her vision. Cogan’s intricate embroidery work completes the show with all too truthful scenes of life, particularly womanhood, to beautifully convey the ugly realities behind closed doors. The exhibition runs until March 25th.
- Erin Morrison
- Here for Health
Right down the hall, the alumni gallery has an incredible show of paintings by Erin Morrison, now an MFA Painting Candidate at UCLA. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, she has exhibited work in galleries from California to New York upon receiving her bachelor’s degree from MCA, and has also been published in numerous arts magazines.
Composed with coffee, graphite, ink, crayon, gouache, acrylic, and pigment, this selection from Morrison’s Flight series demonstrates an impeccable fluency in constructing breathtaking scenes of surrealism. Her paintings are available for purchase, on display until April 8th.
- Erin Morrison
- The Longer the Wait, the More There is to Fear
Memphis is back in stage in New York. And I’m not talking about the musical either. Playwright Katori Hall’s play Hurt Village examines life at the margins in one of Memphis’s most infamous and appropriately named housing projects.
The actual Hurt Village was located on Danny Thomas at North Parkway.
- LARRY KUZNIEWSKI
- Mike Conley’s controlling the game on both ends more than ever for the Grizzlies this season.
Perhaps, from a ready-to-play standpoint, Mike Conley came into the league too early after one year at Ohio State. Perhaps a rookie injury and rookie head coach didn’t help. But, after fitful development, Conley has emerged in a career-best fifth season, at age 24, as a steady and often dynamic floor general for the Grizzlies.
Conley’s floor game is in some rare company this season. He leads the NBA in steals per game at 2.5, bumping his average up from 1.8 last season despite no increase in playing time. At the break, he’s the only point guard in the NBA who actually has more steals (79) than turnovers (77), with Chris Paul — the NBA’s best true point guard — as the only other player at the position even close to that unusual achievement. And Paul and Toronto’s Jose Calderon are the only point guards with both a higher assist ratio and lower turnover ratio than Conley.
Defensively, Conley is still prone to one-on-one struggles, especially against bigger, stronger opponents, but these mismatches seem less frequent or noticeable this season, and the Grizzlies have been four points better per 100 possessions defensively with Conley on the floor.
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Breaking Down the Grizzlies: Marc Gasol
Chris Herrington is taking a look at the Grizzlies’ players, one by one, as the second half of the season starts. Today, it’s Marc Gasol.