Month: March 2014

Categories
Beyond the Arc Sports

Grizzlies 91, Jazz 87: On to the Next One

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

Zach Randolph had his hands full against Derrick Favors last night.

  • Larry Kuzniewski
  • Zach Randolph had his hands full against Derrick Favors last night.

Somehow, the Grizzlies managed to pull off a come-from-behind win in Utah last night to beat a Jazz team that’s given the Griz more trouble than they’ve had any right to all season long now. After trailing by as much as 16 in the third quarter, the Grizzlies did some Sean Tuohy math (“If they can get it to single digits by the end of the third quarter”) and slowly reeled in the Jazz over the next 18 minutes.

The need for a comeback was partly attributable to the slow start: the Griz ended the first quarter trailing 25-17 and shooting 29% from the floor, with ten different guys getting playing time as coach Dave Joerger flailed around to find a set of players who weren’t actively opposed to the idea of playing a basketball game in Utah.

The struggle—a lack of interior defense that made Enes Kanter and Derrick Favors look like, well, Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph, Tony Allen’s continued struggles to guard Gordon Hayward, Courtney Lee’s continued struggles to do much of anything useful, among other maladies—continued for a solid 30 minutes of game time, with the Grizzlies never able to get any closer than 10 points or so.

That changed starting in the third quarter and after Mike Miller tied the game with a huge wide-open 3, the Griz finally got the lead again with 2:17 left in the game. Despite a couple of attempts to turn the ball over and hand the game back to the Jazz, the Grizzlies made it out with the only thing that matters on this road trip: a win.

Game Notes

⇒ James Johnson played more minutes than he has lately (a little over 18) and did… just okay. Joerger put him in no doubt looking for some kind of a spark off the bench to get things going. Johnson did that, to an extent, but whether it was inconsistency due to lack of solid playing time or whether he was infected by the same general lethargy that had the rest of the Grizzlies in the mud (and not in the “good” way), Johnson didn’t do much. In fact, according to Basketball Reference his individual offensive rating was 51 and his defensive rating was 107. Those numbers would be great… if they were reversed.

⇒ Derrick Favors was too much for Zach Randolph to handle last night. He gave Z-Bo fits on both ends most of the game, to the tune of 22 point and 10 rebounds. Of course, Enes Kanter got 15 rebounds, too, which is more indicative of the Grizzlies’ general lack of effort on the offensive glass, but Favors in particular gave Z-Bo problems. Randolph’s inconsistent defense has hurt the Grizzlies at times this season, but it’s hard to say how much of what happened last night was due to a genuine mismatch and how much was effort/execution.

⇒ It would appear that the Monstars have stolen Courtney Lee’s abilities. That’s the only explanation I can think of for his slump as of late. Lee has struggled to even get a shot up, forcing Mike Miller into the role of “primary floor spacer” that doesn’t bode well for the Grizzlies’ tentative playoff hopes. Lee was shooting well above his career averages for a while there, so this is obviously the “regression to the mean” that we were all waiting for, but man, is it poorly-timed. With any luck Lee will get his groove back and the Grizzlies will be on their merry way.

⇒ However improbably, the Grizzlies are now 1-0 on this 5-game road swing, which is the only point that really matters from last night. Everyone struggles in Salt Lake City to an extent. With any luck, last night’s lethargy doesn’t carry over to the rest of this trip, or the Griz are going to find themselves in ninth place faster than you can say “unmet expectations.” File this one away and move on. Next up are the Golden State Warriors tomorrow night.

Categories
News

Firing Mr. Happy? Not Likely

Bruce VanWyngarden says Josh Pastner needs coaching, but not the kind you might think.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

About Jackson Baker’s Politics column on Alison Lundergan Grimes …

Why is Grimes doing that half-fist, Bob Dole thing with her hand? Who teaches that? It makes one come off as a bit of a clone. Is she? Rand Paul is getting standing ovations at Berkley. How is Grimes different from run-of-the-mill Democrats? I mean Bill “NAFTA” Clinton for chrissakes.

Mia S. Kite

About Bianca Phillips’ story, “Knocked Up and Locked Up” …

Healthy and Free TN is glad that Representative DeBerry is reconsidering the bill, but we’re concerned that the current bill is moving ahead, as it passed in the Criminal Justice sub-committee and is scheduled to be heard in the full Criminal Justice Committee next week. Please contact the members of the committee and tell them that we do not want TN to be the first state to pass a law criminalizing women and we ask that they vote NO on HB 1519.

Allison Glass

About Toby Sells’ web story on the decline in homelessness in Memphis …

Thank you for doing this story! I want to clarify that MIFA no longer operates Estival Place. MIFA donated 73 units of transitional housing to Promise Development Corporation which repurposed them as permanent supportive housing. Promise (formerly North Memphis Community Development Corporation) is the property owner/manager for the Memphis Strong Families Initiative. 

Katie Foster

About Alexandra Pusateri’s story on a McKellar Lake clean-up …

People stopped caring about McKellar Lake when the surrounding industry poisoned it. Nobody is going to fish or ski in it, even if you clean up all the trash.

Jeff

Greg Cravens

Jeff, how coy and deceiving you are. People stopped caring about McKellar Lake when integration came about and the neighborhood changed.

I remember the good ole days when whites used to gather in the park at the marina and pavilion, dressed to the nines in their tuxes and the women in their ball room gowns. They danced away the evening and night where no blacks were allowed except for serving the white guests.

That is the true story of what happened to McKellar Lake. After integration and the changing demographics of the neighborhood, the city administration, which was white, abandoned the park and the lake.

oldtimeplayer

When the white folks were swinging down at McKellar Lake, I was like, oh, I don’t know, probably not alive. If I was alive, I was swinging in a diaper. Full disclosure — it was a white diaper.

I’m talking from a fisherman’s point of view. I’ve fished every large body of water in this area. I’ve never fished McKellar. Back in the day, when the Commercial Appeal carried the weekly fishing report, McKellar wasn’t even on the list. Are we now suggesting that’s because of 200 years of racism?

Jeff

Would ya’ll consider stopping this argument and coming out to McKellar this Saturday (and April 26th) from 10 a.m. to noon? In two hours, you can easily pick up 100 pounds of trash that we will recycle. We could really use your help.

Colton

About Jackson Baker’s web post, “Wilkins Formally Announces Bid for 9th District Seat” …

In order to have a chance at unseating a Congressional incumbent, there has to be a groundswell from the electorate to replace that incumbent. Other than the same old group of people that have always opposed Steve Cohen, plus Randy Wade, what indication is there that the electorate wants to replace him? As long as Cohen runs on his record, he gets 75-80 percent just to start off. It doesn’t matter who is running against him, that’s how it’s going to be.

Leftwingcracker

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Vetting the Wharton Plan

Last week, Mayor AC Wharton opened the possibility that Peabody Place might be a good opportunity for increasing Memphis’ convention space on the cheap.

Peabody Place officially closed in 2011, though it was a ghost of itself near the end. Since its closing, there have been reports that the building would be redeveloped by Belz Enterprises into a combination of suites and convention space.

There’s no question the site should be developed into something. The question is what? Mayor Wharton thinks the answer is a convention center. Is that a good idea? Let’s start from what the city needs and work backward.

What the city wants/needs: Here are several schools of thought as to what the city’s convention business needs. Spend a little time in the Cook Convention Center and your first instinct will be — a modern convention center.

That modern space doesn’t have to equal the $650-million Music City Center in Nashville. The harsh reality is, we don’t have the hotel rooms downtown to justify a space that big. Increasing the number of rooms downtown should be the main goal, and it will take time. Occupancy downtown is a little below the national average, and the Average Daily Rate (ADR) is low. Until this changes, developers aren’t exactly going to flock to downtown Memphis.

Any of the three options under discussion — revamping the Cook Center, building a new convention center, or turning Peabody Place into a convention space — could bring more space and hotel rooms, but if the goal is increasing hotel capacity, the Peabody Place proposal has some competitive disadvantages.

Stacking the deck, public-private partnership style: The convention business makes money on two things: room rentals and catering. The space is just the means to an end.

If the idea of expanding the amount of convention space is part of a long-term plan to also increase tourism and the hotel room count in the city, then you may not want to build your space on land that is controlled by a large hotel operator. It creates a competitive advantage for the host hotel. It can bundle services (catering and rooms), which means other hotels are left in the lurch.

Another area of concern is the space itself. The ceiling is mostly glass, and there’s a huge atrium area that’s uneven and concrete, which means it will have to be leveled.

These aren’t deal breakers, but there are structural concerns that have to be dealt with for a convention space that an atrium-centered mall doesn’t have to worry about.

The 300: the myth of many small meetings: In an interview, Mayor Wharton spoke of a “niche market” of 300- to 500-person conventions that the city could seek out. It’s true, the 10,000-person convention market is small and very competitive. It’s also true that most conferences include fewer than 1,000 people. But there are some problems with Wharton’s premise.

First, no one builds with an eye toward the small market. They make large spaces that can be tailored to smaller meetings when necessary.

Second, any space should represent growth from the current convention center. Peabody Place is 300,000 square feet. The Cook Center is 350,000 square feet. There’s no question that adding Peabody would add much-needed space, but it doesn’t build on what we lack. It adds to what we’re already not utilizing.

Finally, Peabody Place is land-locked. There’s no room to grow in the future to accommodate new meetings, and the growing size of meetings that we currently host.

If we did build a new building, even half the size of Music City Center, we should make sure we have the space to expand — just in case.

Our ultimate goal should be bringing more hotel rooms to Memphis so we can compete for other things like an NBA All-Star game, a political convention, or whatever the next opportunity holds.

As for Peabody Place, if Belz Enterprises wants to redevelop it into something like Wharton’s vision, they should go for it. It’s not like they weren’t thinking about it already.

But there’s a reason Belz Enterprises hasn’t already turned Peabody Place into the very thing Mayor Wharton is proposing, and that’s because it’s just not feasible for them at this time. And that doesn’t make it look any more attractive as a public project either.

Steve Ross is a video director and event-production coordinator. He writes about local public policy at vibinc.com and state government at speaktopower.org.

Categories
Music Music Features

Country Counterpoint

CREDIT: Joey Miller

In the rock-and-roll game, artist collaborations can be tricky business and have historically yielded mixed results – just ask Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson, or David Bowie and Mick Jagger.

However, the Memphis music scene, long known for its incestuousness, has tended to have a higher success rate in this regard. From Otis Redding and Carla Thomas, to more recent team-ups like the Wandering, the South Memphis String Band, and Motel Mirrors, local musicians have seemingly always worked and played together well. Never has this been more true than in the case of the River City’s latest artist mash-up, Dead Dawls.

Joey Miller

Dead Dawls is a local supergroup of sorts, combining the members – all eight of them – of the well-known local alt-country acts the Memphis Dawls and Dead Soldiers. The two groups have dabbled with more informal forms of collaboration in the past, with members of each band sitting in with the other at various shows around town. They also share the common members of drummer Paul Gilliam and violinist/multi-instrumentalist Krista Wroten-Combest. But with the release of their first combined effort, a two-song 7″ vinyl record/digital download for the songs “Suburban Woman” and “Slow Motion,” the two bands dove headfirst into the collaborative pool.

“Everyone really embraced the idea that this was kind of an experiment from the beginning, which is probably one of the reasons it worked,” says singer/guitarist and Dead Soldiers member Michael Jasud. And so in January of this year, the bands began rehearsing together in earnest. In less than a month, they had produced two new songs.

“The songs came together quicker than any of us could have expected,” says singer/guitarist Ben Aviotti, also a Dead Soldiers member. “We all collaborated on lyrics and arrangement.”

“Suburban Woman” is an Alabama-esque, ’80s pop-country masterpiece, featuring a strong hook and stacked vocal harmonies. Given the right connections and circumstances, it might legitimately have a shot on commercial radio. And the B-side, “Slow Motion,” is a deeply affecting ballad, offering a nice emotional counterpoint.

Dead Dawls booked time at Toby Vest’s High/Low Recording, tracking and mixing both tracks for the new single in only three days. The single was then mastered and cut to vinyl by local recording engineers Leo Goff and Jeff Powell, respectively.

“The recording process was both amazing and exhausting,” says Aviotti. “It’s without question one of my favorite things I’ve ever recorded in my life.”

The record captures the distilled essence of both groups. Distinct elements of the more soulful and romantic Memphis Dawls and the more rambunctiously intimate Dead Soldiers are readily apparent and compliment each other perfectly.

“The most obvious themes in both bands include vocal harmonies and an undercurrent of southern gothic songwriting,” says singer/guitarist Holly Cole, a member of the Memphis Dawls. “One has a more feminine style, and the other representing a more masculine style. The two do create sort of a yin and yang.”

Dead Dawls will embark on a three-week tour to support the record in April. But first, the band will celebrate the new release this Friday, March 28th, with a performance at the Hi-Tone. “I’m really excited to take off its training wheels, kick it out there, and see how people absorb it,” says Cole. “There is no doubt that it’s like nothing any of us have done before. I, for one, am delightfully surprised by the product that has come out of this collaboration.”

Moving forward, both bands have plans to release full-length albums in the near future and to continue touring separately. But they are also open to the possibility of working together in the future.

“While both bands have tons of great stuff on the horizon, we’ve all agreed that this needs to be a regularly occurring project,” Aviotti said. “Maybe a single a year; maybe a full-length down the road, who knows?”

“I really like the idea of plugging albums that haven’t been recorded yet,” Jasud says. “Rappers are really smart about this. So having said that, look for the Dead Dawls record to drop in 2015.”

“We’ve also got a couple of mix tapes we’re gonna do before that.”

deaddawls.bandcamp.com

The Dead Dawls record release show with special guests the Shine Brothers is at the Hi-Tone Friday, March 28th, at 9 p.m. $10.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Detroit Farm City

The Memphis-Detroit comparisons may be apples-to-oranges in many cases, but both cities share their struggles with food insecurity. In many Memphis neighborhoods, fresh produce is nearly impossible to find.

Malik Yakini

Food deserts abound in Detroit as well, and combating them is the life’s work of Malik Yakini, food justice activist and executive director of the Detroit Black Food Community Network. Yakini will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Vanderhaar Symposium at Christian Brothers University (CBU) on Thursday, March 27th, from 7 to 9 p.m. The event, titled “Good Food Revolution,” is being co-sponsored by Grow Memphis.

Yakini spends his days trying to eliminate food insecurity in inner-city Detroit through D-Town Farm, a seven-acre farm that sells to Detroit farmers markets inside the city limits. His network also runs nutrition programs in Detroit schools and a buyer’s co-op that helps impoverished people buy organic food and green cleaning supplies at a discount. He does all this with an emphasis on the black community of Detroit taking care of itself rather than relying on help from white suburbanites or the government.

His viewpoint on self-determination ties in with his larger vision of alleviating the impact of racism and white privilege on the global food system. He’s traveled to Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Jamaica, and other areas to help develop a food sovereignty movement that embraces black farmers.

This is the ninth year for the Vanderhaar Symposium, named in honor of peace activist and CBU religion professor Gerard A. Vanderhaar. Each year, the symposium features a lecture by an activist promoting some form of social justice.

Ninth Annual Vanderhaar Symposium featuring Malik Yakini, Thursday, March 27th, 7-9 p.m., Christian Brothers University, University Theater (650 E. Parkway S.). Free. gvanderhaar.org

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Occupied Shakespeare

Shakespeare fans are in for a treat this week when Harvard professor and Phi Beta Kappa visiting scholar Dr. Marjorie Garber comes to Rhodes College to “Occupy Shakespeare.” The program borrows its title only from the decentralized anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street movement. Garber is the author of Shakespeare After All, a lively introduction to Shakespeare’s work that considers each play’s original context and how it has been read and interpreted historically. She’s not coming to town to take down “the man” but to look back over the last century, as Shakespeare’s name became synonymous with culture and the humanities, and to ask “What’s next?”

“She’s the best overall introducer of the plays I know,” Rhodes Associate Professor Dr. Scott Newstok says of Garber’s work.

April marks the 398th anniversary of the month when Shakespeare shuffled off his mortal coil, leaving behind a body of popular work that would become the stuff of endless wonder and tireless scholarship. His plays are regarded as the very foundation of modernity, and everywhere they remain in nearly constant production. This is no less true of Shelby County where, just last month, Theatre Memphis closed a production of As You Like It set in the old west. Germantown Community Theatre launches a production of Twelfth Night set in an American trailer park on April 11th, and on April 23rd — the day the Elvis of English-speaking playwrights left the building — the Tennessee Shakespeare Company opens a vaudeville-inspired take on The Taming of the Shrew.

“Occupy Shakespeare: Shakespeare and/in the Humanities” with Dr. Marjorie Garber, Thursday, March 27th, 7 p.m., at Hardie Auditorium. Free.

Categories
Music Music Features

Headed for the (Tip) Top

CREDIT: Josh Miller

Trying to keep track of a musician like Frank McLallen can be difficult. When he’s not working shifts at the Memphis Pizza Café, chances are he’s on a stage somewhere in town with one of his 10 bands. And if he’s not playing live, he’s probably recording at his makeshift studio the Burgundy Ballroom, where local acts of all genres have taken refuge to crank out demos as well as full albums. Despite his chaotic schedule, we caught up with McLallen to discuss his take on the Memphis music scene and get more information on his band the Sheiks, who have a new record coming out next month on their own Ballroom Record Label.

Flyer: First off, let’s get a run-down of all the different bands you play in.

McLallen: I play in the Sheiks, the Maître D’s, Skip Town, Tennessee Screamers, Loose Diamonds, Jack Oblivian and the Tennessee Tearjerkers, Clay Otis and the Dream Sheiks, I play bass with Devil Train a lot as a fill in, I play with Minivan Blues Band, and I also play with a church band at Saint Mary’s Church down in Nesbit, Mississippi, when I can. I also have this new project with Chopper Girl called The Curse.

Tell me about Skip Town. What’s that project like?

That’s a band I do with Johnny Ciaramitaro and Rockin’ Rick. It’s like peyote western music. I like to call it psychedelic highway rock. We do covers and original tunes, but it’s basically like boogie music and psychedelic country. That band can play all night if someone wants us to. I also have this band called the Prom Kings that only plays a couple times a year. We play the Madonna Learning Center Prom and we dress up in ’50s Back to the Future prom outfits and we play Chuck Berry covers and “Earth Angel” and stuff like that. It’s pretty much the Sheiks plus my friend Daniel Brown.

In an average week, how many shows do you think you play?

On a good week, two or three gigs. I used to pick up a lot more. I used to play with Marcella Simien and that was good work. I even played in this casino band that was so shitty, but I needed the money at the time. I got a trio together and played at Horseshoe Casino in Tunica. We played Garth Brooks songs and Journey songs, and it was really embarrassing, but it paid well. I used to hustle a lot more gigs, but now I just try to do the things I like and the things I want to be a part of. I have to keep a calendar to keep all this shit in order. I just got a new planner and I’m basically booked every weekend from now until June. I’d like to keep it that way for the rest of the year.

Why do you think it’s so common for Memphis musicians to be in multiple bands?

Because there are so many great musicians around and so many creative people who are basically all in this together. I look at it like all of us are in this brotherhood or sisterhood of playing music. In my experience, egos don’t really play into the scene like they do in other towns. Everybody gets along for the most part, so it’s easy to share creative ideas with people. I mean, it’s a lot of fun to play music in Memphis, it’s a way of life.

Even though you have all of these different projects, it seems like the Sheiks are your main focus. Tell me more about the “Tip Top” single that’s coming out next month.

It’s actually an EP with two songs on each side. The A-Side has “Keep Me in Mind” and “Tip Top” on it, and the B-Side has “And She Said All These Things” and “Are You Still With Me” on it. The song “Tip Top” is basically about making a trip to the liquor store on Madison Avenue. All those songs are new, and it was recorded at Jack Oblivian’s house and finished up at Doug Easley’s studio. The EP is going to be released on Ballroom Records, which is a new label we started. It will be the first release on that label.

Tell me more about your practice space/recording studio/venue/house, the Burgundy Ballroom.

Sadly it’s coming to an end, but we had a really great three-year run. We put on a bunch of awesome house shows, and had an awesome annual Halloween show. I think we had about seven shows total in there, complete with a full bar and bartender. Keith [Cooper, guitarist for the Sheiks] has a lot of vintage recording equipment, and he’s recorded a lot of local bands at our house, from Moving Finger to Gopes Busters. [Local band] Time just recorded their record at our house, and it came out great. And of course everything the Sheiks have ever done was recorded at the Burgundy Ballroom with the exception of our latest single, which was mainly worked on at Doug Easley’s studio.

What are the Sheiks’ plans for the rest of the year?

Right now we are working on another full-length record. We went down to Austin this past November and got with [former Memphian] Andrew McCalla to record at his house. We recorded all our basic live tracks there and then we went to Doug’s [Easley] studio a couple weeks ago to start working on that. I think we will probably put out another 7″ as well. If we get some money together, I would like to start releasing more bands through the Ballroom record label. Touring wise, we are going to do an East Coast run at the end of May and then go back down to Louisiana and Texas. In the fall we are going to go to Europe with Jack Oblivian. We are hoping to bring Harlan T. Bobo along as well. We will be playing as the Sheiks and as Jack’s backing band, two sets a night for a month. In the meantime, we are just trying to book dates, record more, and hopefully make it out to the West Coast.

Categories
News The Fly-By

“The numbers don’t lie. Thousands fewer low-income women are getting the family planning services they need. We need to take a second look at this.”

— Shelby County Commissioner Steve Mulroy on the issue of Christ Community Health Services (CCHS) serving fewer women than Planned Parenthood did when it held the county’s contract for federal Title X funding. Mulroy co-sponsored a resolution to not renew CCHS’ contract that failed in the Shelby County Commission this week. He was one of the commissioners who voted in favor of CCHS getting the Title X contract in 2011, but now he says CCHS hasn’t held up its end of the bargain. County Health Department numbers show that CCHS saw 1,471 patients in all 12 months of its second year of receiving Title X funds whereas Planned Parenthood saw 1,488 patients in the three final months of its funding. Mulroy has vowed to keep fighting.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Who Was That Team?

For every team, in every sport, there exists a dichotomy: what is expected of that team, and what that team actually becomes. The only exceptions are the super teams (think 1976 Cincinnati Reds, 1985 Chicago Bears, 2012-13 Miami Heat) or the extraordinarily dreadful (the 1992-93 Dallas Mavericks and the 2008 Detroit Lions come to mind). The mercurial nature of the 2013-14 Memphis Tigers made for a dichotomy as pronounced as any this proud program has experienced (suffered?) before.

There’s the team Memphians wanted to see, the team they thought coach Josh Pastner had secured this past November. A veteran (four senior guards!) core, a pair of prize recruits (Austin Nichols, Nick King), and a brand of athleticism that would ensure a frenetic offensive pace and stout, lock-down defense. And there were games in which this team did, in fact, surface. A payback win over 5th-ranked Oklahoma State in early December. An upset of 12th-ranked Louisville on the Cardinals’ floor in January. An astonishing late-game comeback against Gonzaga — with ESPN’s Game Day crew at FedExForum — in early February. When the Tigers closed their second game against Louisville (this time ranked 7th in the country) on a 15-1 run, Tiger fans collectively screamed, “Yes . . . this is our team!”

But hold on. The win over Oklahoma State was considered remarkable largely because the Cowboys had destroyed Memphis — scoring 101 points — less than two weeks earlier. As tough as the Tigers proved to be against the defending national champs, they were as soft in losing five games combined against Cincinnati and Connecticut. (You’d have to go back a few years to find a more dispiriting loss than the 19-point beat-down the Tigers took on their home floor against the Huskies in the quarterfinals of the American Athletic Conference (AAC) tournament.) And let’s not forget the loss that may have done the most damage to the Tigers’ NCAA tournament seed: February 27th at Houston. A Cougar team the Tigers beat by 23 points in January controlled the game, start to finish. Mercurial doesn’t do this Memphis team justice.

So what exactly was the group we’ll remember as the 2013-14 Tigers? Once the hurt of the season-ending loss to Virginia on Sunday begins to fade, when we’re able to pull back and examine the mosaic of a season instead of the tiny panels that made that season, we’ll likely see precisely what we got: One of the top 32 teams in the country, and no more.

There was some irony to the Tigers falling out of the Top-25 rankings on the eve of the NCAA tournament, as they’d managed to stay in those rankings the entire regular season. (The AAC tourney loss was just that ugly.) After eight years of Conference USA 2.0, Pastner led his club through a gauntlet of 11 ranked opponents, tying a program record set in 2004-05. (That team, remember, played in the NIT). Memphis beat five of those teams, and came agonizingly close to knocking off a Florida team — in Madison Square Garden — that entered the NCAA tournament as the number-one team in the country. This was a good team, just not a great one. (It was, let it be said, a poor defensive team, weak in both body and effort. Priority number one for the offseason should be strengthening. Period.)

Next season will be very different. The departure of those four senior guards — Joe Jackson, Chris Crawford, Geron Johnson, and Michael Dixon — will alter, literally, the way the Tigers play the game. Tiger fans will have to get acquainted with Markel Crawford and Pookie Powell (both redshirted this season) and newcomers Dominic Magee and Avery Woodson. Big men Shaq Goodwin and Austin Nichols will become the faces of the program, while Nick King, presumably, transitions from role player off the bench to impact scorer. They will not be ranked among the country’s top ten teams, maybe not the top 20. And they will not be favored to win the AAC. They’ll enter the season claiming to be overlooked and underappreciated, with little to lose and a new chapter in Tiger history to gain.

And they’ll likely surprise us, for good or ill. They’ll win a game they shouldn’t … and lose a game they shouldn’t. Leaving those who love Tiger basketball to wrestle, once again, with the dichotomy that makes every season worth following in the first place.