When Willie Kemp and Doneal Mack stroll to midcourt before tomorrow’s game against Tulsa, they’ll receive the kind of ovation Tiger players of the four-year variety have come to expect on Senior Day. But this is a unique tandem (reduced from a trio when Pierre Henderson-Niles was dismissed from the team last month). Kemp and Mack will likely end their careers with the most wins of any Tiger class save for the one that directly preceded them (Antonio Anderson, Robert Dozier, and Chance McGrady). In many respects, they will be the last faces of what will be known as the Calipari Era in these parts. (Come next season, Wesley Witherspoon and Roburt Sallie will have played more games for Josh Pastner than they did for John Calipari.) But neither player has coasted through his four years at the U of M. The wins seemed to have come rather easy until their senior season arrived, but both Kemp and Mack show bruises in the pictures with all those trophies.
Having starred at Bolivar Central High School, Kemp chose Memphis over Tennessee after one of the first recruiting battles between Calipari and UT’s Bruce Pearl. With Darius Washington leaving school after his sophomore year, the Tiger point-guard position was Kemp’s to win. He did so, and started all but a single game for a team that went 33-4 and reached the NCAA tournament’s Elite 8 for the second straight year. With Andre Allen backing him up, Kemp averaged 21 minutes and 6.4 points per game, adjusting his game to fit those of Chris Douglas-Roberts, Antonio Anderson, Joey Dorsey, and Jeremy Hunt. He hit four of five three-point attempts against Ohio State in the regional finals, but on a day the Tigers were overmatched by Greg Oden, Mike Conley, and friends.
- Larry Kuzniewski
- Willie Kemp
The next two seasons were trying for Kemp, as he found himself losing minutes first to Derrick Rose, then as a junior to Tyreke Evans. The fact that each of those “one-and-done” stars will likely have NBA Rookie of the Year hardware in their trophy cases is small consolation to a player whose confidence dove with his playing time. Kemp averaged but 13 minutes on the court as a sophomore and junior and saw his field-goal percentage plummet to 28 percent in the 2008-09 season. He started but two of 76 games over this two-year stretch.
