Author: Chris Gadd

His footwork was phenomenal, considering that Chris Massie’s listed 6’9″ frame carries an easy 260 pounds. And Massie’s hands were arguably the strongest yet softest pair in the collegiate game. His voice was equally soft — except for flashes of on-court emotion — and usually completely muted when members of the media neared.

But, according to U of M head coach John Calipari, those three Massie talents never worked better in unison than they did Thursday night in Oklahoma City — following his 20-point, 13-rebound effort in the Tigers’ 84-71 first-round loss to Arizona State.

“As I turned to walk, he jumped up, took three steps, grabbed me and said, ‘Hey, coach, thanks for letting me come back,'” says Calipari about their post-game exchange on the team bus. “And then it really got emotional while all of us were in there.”

Calipari had just finished delivering his final post-game speech of the abruptly completed 2002-03 season. “It got emotional,” Calipari reiterates. “You start getting emotional anyway, because it’s the last time you’re going to see these guys and be in that situation with them. You had guys crying and you had guys that were in an almost depressive state.”

Massie snapped out of it long enough to provide one final assist to Calipari. “That just shows how far the kid has come and how appreciative he is of opportunities,” Calipari says. “It has taken him a year and a half to get that way. That’s why I said that it is disappointing how things are sometimes portrayed.”

The “portrayal” Calipari referred to was a March 19th Commercial Appeal story detailing Massie’s unconventional road to joining the Tigers. Calipari said the story negatively affected the Tiger senior and his immediate family. Chris’ mother, Bernice Massie, was reported to have called her son crying, upset and incensed about the article. The coaching staff questioned the late-season timing of the story and also wanted to clarify that the then-19-year-old Massie’s criminal trespassing charge was a misdemeanor he received for jumping a fence to go fishing.

Tony Burlingame, an Elkins High School basketball coach and once Massie’s world history teacher, said via e-mail that his quotes describing Massie (who passed 21 first-semester hours in 2002 to gain eligibility) as a “thug” were taken out of context.

Burlingame added: “I was led to believe that the article was a tribute praising Chris for overcoming so many obstacles that he faced early in life to become a tremendous asset to [the Memphis] community and university. We should be praising him for his accomplishments in the present day rather than digging into his past.”

In the CA‘s defense, story sources often read their attributed quotes and then deny them, even when they’ve been recorded. Perhaps that’s why Massie chose his words so carefully this season, speaking only when his words mattered most.

n Due to the Wednesday night declaration of war with Iraq, fans’ emotions were somewhat subdued in Oklahoma City’s Ford Center — the NCAA Tournament West region site and Memphis’ draw — in the days and hours leading up to the Tigers’ game. Providing a brief respite from news of troop movements and air strikes thousands of miles away, the Tigers prepared for their game with the Sun Devils, played just blocks from the Oklahoma City National Memorial, site of the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building. The U of M staff decided to forego the 20-minute shoot-around scheduled for all teams and instead practiced at an undisclosed location. But as tip-off approached, the large contingent of blue-and-gray-clad fans crammed through the gates, displaying face paint and optimistic smiles.

n As for the future of Tiger basketball, New Jersey native Sean Banks, the recently maligned Top 15 Memphis recruit, played his final prep game for Bergen Catholic March 16th, losing 45-44 to Camden Catholic in the Parochial A state championship. According to Bergen Catholic’s school newspaper, Banks, who scored two points in 12 minutes, sobbed after the game and spent an extra three minutes on the bench and 30 minutes in the locker room. He had been allowed to return to his team March 8th after a February 18th arrest for a “disorderly persons offense” when a car he was in tried to elude police. Memphis assistant coach Tony Barbee said it would not affect the university’s decision on Banks.

“We are still behind Sean 100 percent,” Barbee said. “We have plans on him being here. It’s unfortunate that sometimes we get lumped in with people we sometimes associate with. He wasn’t driving. Those people picked him up from practice and were taking him home. Somebody else may have had an issue, but that has nothing to do with Sean.”

You’re running a little late for the afternoon festivities,

but surely the food isn’t all gone, and the keg can’t already

be tapped, right? And where’s the house anyway? You’ve done this before.

Just look for all the cars.

“Ah, that must be it,” you think,

spotting the line of vehicles along the street — and what an odd mix it is:

Mercedes and sparkling Cadillac SUVs (entrepreneurial millionaire Tiger donors)

parked beside Saturns and dilapidated old Buicks (lost, elderly gentleman who turned

into the wrong driveway).

You open the front door. People are standing around with drinks (Cokes

or tea, no alcohol) and plates of catered food. Most of the women are in

the kitchen, occasionally glancing at the TV. The men are gathered in the living

room, zeroed-in on the big screen. You’ve been to this kind of party before.

Then you notice a few oddities: big lights and cameras; notepads and

recorders; Cal’s Championship Steakhouse employees. It’s a

holiday get-together that hasn’t happened in seven years. Events like this, you think,

should be an annual rite of passage for every Tiger player and fan.

“Who wants to go out West?” asks

U of M head coach John Calipari (and our host), sitting in his favorite chair.

“You can all stop off at some of these

people’s places in Colorado along the way.”

“You can all stay at my house,”

says Gaylord Entertainment Corporation chairman Mike Rose.

As the NCAA men’s basketball tournament brackets are unveiled this

Sunday afternoon, seated on the floor, on couches and chairs, are the

members of the Tiger basketball team. Standing around them are the representatives

of the Memphis fan base.

Race. Gender. Age. Demographics. Through Tiger basketball, those issues

are moot today.

There’s South Memphis’ Foote Homes native Antonio Burks seated

beside his millionaire coach Calipari. Buried on the couch between

small-town Clarksville, Missississippi, native

Earl Barron and Memphis Central High graduate John Grice sits

walk-on Nathaniel Root, who hails from even smaller Adamsville, Tennessee.

Standing behind them is Tiger TV and radio analyst Matt Dillon.

It’s a big moment, a moment that has TV sets from Collierville to

Orange Mound tuned to the same channel.

“The Memphis Tigers, as a No. 7 seed, will play the 10th-seeded Sun Devils

of Arizona State in Oklahoma City ”

By the time you read this, the Tigers may be headed home.

But will it ultimately matter?

Yes, a first-round loss to lower-seeded Arizona State would hurt —

no, actually devastate — this Memphis team. But would it take away

from what this team has done? Would it detract from how this 2002-03 squad

has once again unified the entire city around Tiger hoops?

Not really.

As a number-seven seed in the tournament, the U of M is supposed to

beat its 10th-seeded opponent, Arizona State. But as every basketball fan

knows, Cinderella upset stories are inevitable in the tournament’s early rounds.

Still, this Memphis team has already lived out a rags-to-riches

fairy tale of sorts and is just now taking the pumpkin carriage to the

ball. And it shouldn’t take a Calipari-esque motivational speech to

convince people of that.

“It has been a fun year,” Calipari

says. “This is a team and a program that is still learning. But this is a group of

young men that want to learn and want to do well. This is a hungry team,”

Calipari added. “We have not been given a

whole lot of respect.”

And why wouldn’t the Tigers still be famished for more games? Look at

what they’ve already overcome: Chris Massie and Billy Richmond missing the

first semester. A suspended Burks missing the first three games, then

missing more with injuries and his mother’s health problems. Wade and

Richmond missing a game each for leaving the bench during a brawl. The

near-season-long, week-to-week prognosis of now-redshirt freshman Almamy Thiero’s health. And the three walk-ons brought in just to have enough players to

practice. Now, only time, luck, and good basketball will tell whether those

increasingly prevalent blue T-shirts you see around town are prophetic of good

things to come.

Tournament success or not, these Tigers have already won.

John Grice measures over 10 feet tall, scowling at his audience and dribbling

hard toward an unseen goal. Thousands see him each day, showcasing the ball-handling

skills his head coach John Calipari would prefer never to witness. (“John

Grice can take one dribble,” says Cal. “That’s it.”)

Grice has become an ambassador of sorts for the Memphis Tigers, at least for

thousands of truck drivers, rush-hour commuters, and family vacationers. The

physically gifted, sometimes troubled Tiger senior is the face on a Tigers billboard

next to I-40 at the Whitten Road exit.

It was a somewhat embarrassing and unexpected honor for the mostly reserved

Grice. He didn’t even know about it until mid-season. “The only reason

that I found out about it was that Nathaniel Root told me that he and his girlfriend

saw it,” Grice says. “I just feel honored that they would put me up

there. It’s a great feeling.”

He wasn’t the only one surprised.

Grice, who was enveloped by his large family during senior ceremonies at Saturday’s

Cincinnati game, at one time seemed closer to having his face emblazoned on

a milk carton, joining a long list of “whatever happened to” former

Tiger players who didn’t pan out.

It’s been nearly three years since Grice signed with Memphis out of Southwest

Tennessee Community College as a first-team JUCO All-American. His first two

years at Memphis, Grice worked to overcome disciplinary suspensions and academic

ineligibility. Then, in August, Calipari announced that Grice had regained eligibility.

And now, as March Madness grows more fervent, Calipari’s compliments toward

Grice (though he had zero points and two rebounds in limited minutes in the

Tigers’ emotional 67-48 win over Cincy) have escalated. Philadelphia 76ers coach

Larry Brown called Grice’s comeback the “success story of the year.”

“I was just saying to myself, I can beat this,” Grice says. “I

just asked God to give me another chance, and he did. I put it in His hands

and here I am.”

Says former teammate Courtney Trask, who was suspended with Grice after academic

misconduct: “The hype he had when he first got there created a lot of pressure.

But he worked hard and stayed through it and he’s made it back.”

There are others Grice credits with molding him as a person and player. One

of those is his mother, Mary Grice. The other is his wheelchair-bound grandfather

— another 6’6″ John Grice — who obviously passed on more than a name.

Both have attended almost all of the younger Grice’s games. It’s an attendance

streak that stretches back to junior college, high school, and beyond, according

to the family.

“Ever since John came home from the hospital, he came over to my house,

and we’ve grown up together like that,” says “Grand Pappy”

Grice, crossing two long fingers. Even seated in a wheelchair, the elder Grice

makes for an imposing presence behind the basket. “I know that he got a

lot of his height from me because his mom is kind of tall and she got hers from

me,” says the elder Grice. Grice’s family also supplied him with some additional

advertising on December 30th. During the Tigers’ home game with Murray State,

nearly a hundred relatives and friends wore T-shirts announcing Grice’s 23rd

birthday.

“It felt great that my family came out and supported me like that in

big numbers with signs and things on my birthday,” Grice says. Calipari,

at times Grice’s biggest critic, has also been quick to support his player even

during some of his least-productive games.

“I’m proud of John Grice,” Calipari says. “He’s listening.

He’s trying to do the right things. I’m happy for him and how he’s playing.”

“We have a mutual understanding that I’ll go out and do what he asks,”

Grice says.

Grice has also turned into the Tigers’ “Mr. Clutch” down the stretch,

burying late free throws and three-pointers. He even overcame his own admitted

bad judgment with a throat-cutting gesture to ice the Tigers’ win over Louisville

at the line. Tiger fans can only hope there are more heroics in store and a

possible drive down I-40 to see Grice again — and the rest of the Tigers —

in the 2003 NCAA Tournament’s first round in Nashville.

n If the NCAA men’s basketball-tournament selection committee follows ESPN.com

“Bracketologist” Joe Lunardi’s current predictions, Memphis will indeed

be traveling to Nashville’s Gaylord Entertainment Center for a March 21st showdown

with Bobby Knight’s Texas Tech Red Raiders. Says Lunardi: “I’m guessing

the Tigers would take this draw. Texas Tech and Wake Forest in Nashville is

a path to the Sweet 16.” The Tigers would be the number-six seed in Lunardi’s

scenario; Tech, number 11. Also seeded in ESPN’s Nashville bracket is current

ACC leader Wake Forest (3) which was beaten recently by C-USA leader Marquette.

n The Tigers, who play at late-season nemesis Houston Thursday and finish the

regular season at UAB Saturday, moved up to number 18 in the Associated Press

basketball poll released on Monday.

The first flying beer bottle carried only a few drops of backwash. I was able to stay relatively dry from that one.

But after a second beer bottle then a third and fourth flew just over the heads of everyone on press row, it seemed things might go from rowdy to medieval.

Memphis had just defeated the Green Wave of Tulane University, 58-57, and suddenly everyone wearing blue and gray in the on-campus Fogelman Arena which was at near-capacity with 3,155 in attendance had more to worry about than being struck by airborne Mardi Gras beads.

The Tigers raced off the floor, thinking more about the win they had just escaped with after John Grice’s out-of-nowhere clutch shooting than the sailing cups and bottles. Reporters tucked away their laptops. The PA announcer called for order on the court.

But even for those of us caught in the melee, it was apparent that both teams had just played, if not the most important, at least the toughest and most draining game of their respective seasons. It was a game the Tigers could not afford to lose. A nationally witnessed letdown to the Green Wave two weeks after losing to Saint Louis would not have looked good to the NCAA tournament selection committee.

“When you go on the road and win, it’s hard,” said Tigers coach John Calipari. He staggered to the post-game radio show, water in hand, in a sweater and casual pants. He’d had to change out of his sweat-drenched suit.

“We get this everywhere we go,” Calipari added. “The bottom line was we needed to win the game and move on.”

It almost didn’t happen. But trailing 53-49 with 4:45 left, Grice shut out the crowd noise and the pressure and hit the first of his three three-pointers. Grice’s trifectas would account for Memphis’ final nine game-winning points.

“Thank the Lord the shots went down,” Grice said.

A very opposite sentiment was vocalized by the home crowd when their team failed to even get off a final shot. The rowdiness actually started at halftime, when one of the many liquid-courage-inspired Tulane students threw what appeared to be a T-shirt at the huddled Memphis players. It landed at Billy Richmond’s feet.

Richmond, never one to back down, picked up the shirt then reared back as if to throw it at the Tulane student section. Then, just as quickly, Richmond’s smile replaced the sneer and he kept the T-shirt as a souvenir from the Big Easy.

Tiger forward Chris Massie received the most heckling. Chants of “GED,” with signs spelling out “Good Enough Degree,” seemed to inspire Massie, who played through triple-teams and sweltering heat. Massie played a game-high 35 minutes and led the team in all major categories with 16 points, 12 rebounds, and four assists.

“[Massie] just had big rebounds and baskets and big passes,” Calipari said.

Such a performance can only better prepare Massie, and the team, for potential March Madness pressure and atmosphere.

n Grice and company weren’t the only Tigers to come through in the clutch, as several Tiger fans taking the Amtrak train to New Orleans left nearly five hours late due to an earlier Illinois derailment and chemical spill. Exiting the train, everyone on board basically made his way straight to the Tulane campus and Fogelman Arena, just in time to catch the final minutes of the first half. Tiger fans at home didn’t fare much better, as the Duke-Wake Forest game went into two overtimes and ESPN carried that over instead of the Tiger-Green Wave first half.

n The last few days have been nostalgia-filled for Memphis fans, topped off by this week’s big Louisville game. At the UAB game, Larry Finch again received a standing ovation as he was honored at center court at halftime, along with most members of the 1973 NCAA Tournament Final Four team. Though most of the Tigers weren’t close to being born 30 years ago, most of the native Memphis players understood Finch’s importance to this community.

“A lot of the older guys who my father hung out with, they always talked about how good a player he was,” Richmond said. “I didn’t get to see him actually play, or talk to him, but we attended the same church. Marcus Nolan and Rodney Newsom, those Hamilton guys, they talked about him. They always said that he was a good person. I think that he was a great coach and he had a nice passion for the game just a great all-around person. The people here really love him.”

John Grice agreed. “I remember my parents saying that he was a real good player, that he could fill it up,” Grice said. “He was one of the best shooters to ever come through this college. I watched them play a little bit. We had some good teams back then.”

Anthony Rice feels at home here.

Since the second grade, when Rice first discovered this niche that provides him solace, he has visited his quiet retreat often.

Once there, his subconscious takes over.

Using a fluid stroke honed from years of self-teaching combined with inherent skill, Rice creates one soft arc after another. High, low, short, and long. Each springs from his fingertips with a purpose in its variety.

He is in a rhythm. The image begins to take shape.

Rice then begins drawing and shading the hair, moving next to the neck, jaw, and nose. The curves he creates give way to straight lines. Thin, light, thick, and dark. Each goes toward an ultimate goal — to make his mother, Marie Avery, smile.

And smile she does. Marie’s grin can be found permanently in the now-framed recreation of her senior picture that Rice drew for her 50th birthday present. That joy also exudes when she talks about her son, the sophomore shooting guard for the Memphis Tigers.

“He always liked to draw,” Marie says. “He was in the fifth grade when I really noticed how good he was. He loved to get sketchpads and draw in them,” Marie adds. “He would draw the photos in magazines.”

The place Rice visits when drawing is his own imagination. It’s a different kind of zone from the one so often referred to on the basketball court.

Rice loves being there too. But he doesn’t need the adulation or the crowds. He simply works hard for himself, for his family, for his coaches, and because it’s the right thing to do.

“I really don’t care about all the notoriety,” Rice says. “I don’t really need to get my name out there. I just want to win a championship. I’m here for the team.”

This self-effacement may be why he found basketball, the one sport where the quiet and introspective Rice could play alone for hours, working on individual skills until he was ready for the team concept he’s now adopted.

“Basketball took up — takes up — most of my time outside of art,” says Rice, an art major at the U of M. “I started shooting every day after school. They had to make me do my homework. I loved the game so much.”

The extracurricular practice soon included summer teams and camps. During his junior year at North Clayton High in Atlanta, Rice first visited Memphis, and found a mentor he could trust in Tiger head coach John Calipari. At Calipari’s camp, Rice one day found himself one-on-one with the coach.

“I did a couple of drills with Coach Calipari,” Rice says. “I liked his style. That’s a main reason that I committed to Memphis.”

“Anthony and Calipari just saw something in each other,” Marie adds. “They just clicked.”

Perhaps that’s why you rarely hear Calipari mention Rice’s name in admonishment. In fact, it’s seldom that one hears Rice’s name mentioned at all, whether by fans, media, or even the Memphis staff, though he has started almost every game, is a team leader in minutes, averages 10 points, and is one of the Tigers’ best defenders and top outside shooters.

Rice, who cites his career 10-rebound effort in the 2002 NIT final as his favorite collegiate game, plays on and plays hard, unfazed by the lack of attention. Perhaps that’s why he is the epitome of a Calipari-style player: team-first attitude, maximum effort and emotion, and a desire to win.

“If people start talking about me being a hero [on the court], I ain’t really into all that, I never have been,” Rice says. “If that attention comes, then fine. But I don’t need to get my name in the spotlight.”

Rice’s basketball training began with solo shooting sessions and the tough-love discipline of his older brother, Tremayne, who had left his high school team. He didn’t want Anthony to follow that path.

“My older brother instilled a work ethic into me,” Rice says. “He stayed on me. He didn’t let me cry. And he made me lift weights. I’m still skinny but I was like an Ethiopian. I was so small.”

Marie, a longtime nurse, saw it firsthand on those days when she wasn’t at DeKalb Medical Center. “After [leaving the team], Tremayne emphasized to Anthony that this is the way that you can go to school,” Marie says. “He was very influential.”

Rice says he was recruited heavily by Louisville, Kentucky, Alabama, Auburn, Syracuse, and Mississippi State, among others. But, after his official Memphis visit, he didn’t look further.

“Once I came to the Temple game on my visit and I saw the arena and how loud it was and the fans making noise and the excitement, it drew me in,” Rice says. “I was like, ‘Man, I want to play here.'”

Rice’s parents attend games whenever they can, but Memphis can never be exactly like home, where Marie and her husband Douglas Avery, an ordained minister and Rice’s stepfather, still live. They are raising Rice’s little brother, Yoland, and ministering to others.

The family’s closeness can partially be explained by the death of Rice’s natural father in 1985, when Rice was 2 years old. “We are very family-oriented,” Marie says. “We have a lot of table discussions and sit-down dinners.”

And always in the background at home is Marie’s portrait, providing a reminder of Anthony and how she raised her son to put others first.

It’s a pretty picture.

Seated on the bench, Billy Richmond watched and waited while the young ballplayer first dribbled, then rolled, and finally carried the ball toward him. Without hesitating, Richmond swiped the ball from the boy’s hands. The young Memphis Tigers fan was, after all, only 4 years old. Richmond, the personable Tiger sophomore, then added his signature to the rest of the team’s autographs on the ball, eliciting a large grin from the child — and himself.

Seated next to his aunt, Bettye Hilliard, a 25-year employee of Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center, Richmond knows the hospital halls well. To be here again — this time as a Tiger — and hand out posters, backpacks, and wristbands as part of the team’s January 17th visit brought out Richmond’s trademark mischievous smile.

“This was fun to be able to be with the kids and the nurses and their parents. We brought a lot of excitement to the hospital today,” Richmond said. “It was a fun experience for all of us.”

Richmond smiles a lot, and easily. But Monday, in the Larry O. Finch Center, Richmond, who turns 21 this month, was humbled, and most assuredly not smiling as he delivered a message to anyone who would listen: “I just want to apologize to the people of the city of Memphis for how I handled myself,” Richmond said. “I take full responsibility. I hope everyone out there will forgive me. I was out of line.”

“It’s something that I have to change,” Richmond added. “I feel like the players follow my lead, and if something is not going right, I take full responsibility.”

Richmond felt compelled to apologize for a heated verbal exchange with freshman teammate Jeremy Hunt that almost turned physical Saturday in St. Louis, where the Tigers lost for the third time in four games, 69-66. The brief struggle occurred near the end of the first half, when a frustrated Richmond (who scored zilch in only seven minutes) and Hunt engaged in a shouting match.

But now that Richmond has apologized, will it help?

There is growing gossip in Memphis about internal turmoil among the Tigers. Some say Richmond is the culprit. This supposition is based on Richmond’s public history — his dismissal from Vanderbilt, his suspension for fighting during the Arkansas-Pine Bluff game, and the rift with Hunt.

Only a few people witnessed Richmond and the rest of the Tiger team reaching out to children at Le Bonheur. His detractors didn’t see him and Hunt, the two hometown stars, seated like towering Santa Clauses as children lined up to visit them. The moment wasn’t highly publicized, and few saw the two friends joking with each other, walking around the hospital lobby, playing with kids, and talking with parents, nurses, and doctors.

But Anthony Thomas did.

Thomas, a 13-year-old from Turrell, Arkansas, was at Le Bonheur being treated for a serious sinus condition that has caused inflammation of his eye cavities. He had a Polaroid picture taken with Memphis coach John Calipari, whom he graded as “good.”

Tameka Burts also visited with Richmond, Hunt, and the other Tiger players and coaches before gathering armfuls of signed memorabilia and heading off to the Intensive Care Unit, where she has worked for six years.

“I thought it would be a nice thing to do because a lot of these kids in ICU are in critical condition,” Burts said. “I thought the souvenirs would be a nice thing to see when they wake up. This visit is just wonderful. It’s wonderful,” Burts added.

The children in the hospital’s dialysis room also received posters, and then a group of Tigers — including Hunt — visited each child.

“I like watching them on TV when I have a chance,” said 13-year-old Jerika Coleman, who spends hours in the room, ridding her blood of impurities due to kidney failure. But most people don’t have her perspective on the team.

The focus on the Tigers by the media is something Calipari accepts. He knows it can be a love/hate relationship. “These are young kids. They make mistakes,” Calipari says. “Billy says dumb things. He’s not a bad guy.”

Of course, the children at Le Bonheur already knew that.

We all like lists.

And John Calipari, though he usually denotes the RPI rankings with “R.I.P.,” is no exception. That was evident following an October practice. Already, Calipari was laying groundwork for seasons to come.

Seated beside Sean Banks, the slender, 6’7″ tender-faced future Tiger, Calipari described the nationally known New Jersey high school senior:

“I feel good about where we are in recruiting,” Calipari said. “This kid is one of the top 20 or 25 players in the nation. And, you know, what’s amazing is that he called us. And Kendrick Perkins, who we signed, is a top five player.”

But whose top 25? Or top 50 or 100? There are as many lists as there are basketball publications and Web sites.

We have to assume that Calipari, ever the preacher for team and effort, is honest when he says he’s never visited a Web site ranking these players. Nor, he contends, has he picked up a paper, listened to the radio, or flipped on the TV for such information.

It must be hard not to.

Everywhere you turn, the increased exposure of prep sports, beginning as early as elementary school, is evident. The nation’s top prep prospect — LeBron James, who plays for the nation’s top-ranked high school team, St. Vincent-St. Mary of Akron, Ohio — is covered daily.

As the Tigers prepared for their January 4th game against Villanova, James’ St. Vincent team was playing on ESPN2 for the second time. A third ESPN-televised showcase for the prep star is in the works.

Which is all old news for sports fans. But even a diehard hoops junkie might wonder where the hype — and the lists — originate. One answer is Christopher Lawlor, USA Today‘s preps writer and editor, who works 15- to 20-hour days compiling information for basketball junkies.

Lawlor says he doesn’t “really think about having a lot of power,” because he enjoys his job and the people he meets too much. He creates his rankings by making phone calls, observing state polls, watching videotape, and traveling to top basketball tournaments — or football games — throughout the country.

“I have my coaching contacts throughout the country and, of course, there are the teams that are good every year,” Lawlor says. “I go to the summer camps and that’s where I usually do a lot of the individual evaluations.”

Lawlor sees nothing wrong with all the praise and evaluations heaped on barely pubescent players and teams, though there are critics of the process, particularly concerning James’ potential exploitation.

“That’s a traveling show,” says Lawlor of James. “It’s a one-time thing. Everything will be back to normal next year. I know that there are certain people who live and die by these rankings, but overall they’re good for schools because they bring a lot of exposure to prep sports.”

In Memphis, White Station is the lone Top 25 representative (number 20) in USA Today‘s poll, creating exposure for a city many consider to have the best per-capita basketball talent in the nation.

White Station head coach Terry Tippett, who is one of Lawlor’s coaching confidants, says he also hears praise about Memphis in his travels.

“I have college coaches tell me all the time that, outside of New York, L.A., and Chicago, Memphis has the best basketball,” Tippett says. “It’s amazing how good Memphis basketball is.”

Such notoriety has advantages and disadvantages, Tippett says, depending on which side of the ESPN camera you’re on. “I don’t think that the public schools should even be ranked in the same polls as those private schools,” Tippett says. “It’s not fair when they can recruit from all over the country.”

“Like when BTW [Booker T. Washington High School] played Oak Hill Academy, they asked Andre Allen to play for them [the next season],” adds Tippett, speaking about the city’s top-ranked high school junior. “If I was coaching that team, I would never play them again.”

As for the USA Today/Lawlor rankings, where Oak Hill seems to permanently reside due to a constant flow of top Division I prospects, Tippett says he doesn’t pay much attention to it.

“It’s here,” Tippett says. “You can’t change it. You may not like these polls and rankings, but you want to be in it if it’s there. It’s a compliment to the program.”

Hamilton High School is another local program that was ranked by USA Today. In 1999-2000, now-U of M player Billy Richmond led the team into the Top 25. Longtime Hamilton head coach Ted Anderson couldn’t care less.

“We’ve always had success against those supposed nationally ranked teams,” Anderson says. “Most of the top national teams are undefeated, but you’re never going to have an undefeated team out of Memphis. It’s too difficult in Memphis.”

Anderson says his ranked team of two years ago took the same approach.

“It was fun for the team,” Anderson says. “Billy and the team didn’t talk a whole lot about it either. He took a rather nonchalant approach. We had bigger things to worry about, like winning the district.”

For those who do care, Lawlor recently added top Tiger signee/NBA prospect Perkins and his Ozen High team (18-0) from Beaumont, Texas, to the USA Today rankings at number 15. With the addition of the 6’10” center and his Ozen teammate Keena Young (who also signed with Memphis), the Tigers are already on many Top 10 lists for recruiting classes.

Of course, as Calipari quickly reminded his listeners that October day, “It really doesn’t matter where somebody else rates [your players]. Nobody thought Jeremy Hunt, Rodney Carney, and Almamy Thiero were this good, except we felt they filled our needs. They fill the needs we have for this program.”

Guess you could call that his recruiting wish list.