If you call yourself a Memphis sports fan and didn’t have
fun over the first weekend of 2009, you’d best get comfortable with your Wii. In
a veritable three-day festival of athletics, the Bluff City set a standard
unlikely to be matched over the next 51 weeks.
• Last Friday, playing in weather borrowed from early
October, Kentucky erased a 13-point deficit to beat East Carolina in front of
56,125 fans at the 50th AutoZone Liberty Bowl Classic. The game’s singular
highlight, of course, came on Wildcat defensive lineman Ventrell Jenkins’ fumble
recovery, which he returned 56 yards for the game-winning touchdown with three
minutes to play. Jenkins delivered the finest stiff-arm since the Heisman Trophy
was sculpted, dropping Pirate quarterback Patrick Pinkney on his way to paydirt.
The outcome, alas, is hardly a ringing endorsement for
Conference USA. When C-USA’s champion is knocked off by a Kentucky team that was
merely the sixth or seventh best squad in the SEC, the divide between the
“mid-major” league in which the University of Memphis plays and the BCS big boys
only seems to expand. For what it’s worth, since the Liberty Bowl adopted its
current C-USA-vs.-SEC format after the 2006 season, the SEC representative
hasn’t won by more than eight points.
• Saturday night at FedExForum, the Memphis Tigers played
their sixth home game in 18 days, handling the Lamar Cardinals, 108-75, in the
Tigers’ highest scoring game of the season. (The win seemed more significant
than it should have, with former Tiger coach Tic Price sitting on the Lamar
bench, an assistant to Steve Roccaforte, himself an assistant to Memphis coach
John Calipari for three years.) Longtime fan favorite Antonio Anderson not only
seized the spotlight, but made history. Tagged with somewhat of a euphemism as
“the glue guy” for three 30-win teams, Anderson became only the second Tiger
player to achieve a triple-double (12 points, 10 rebounds, 13 assists). And even
Penny Hardaway — who performed the feat in 1993 — couldn’t claim the remarkable
13-0 assist-to-turnover ratio Anderson managed in the Tigers’ 10th win of the
season.
“No turnovers?,” asked Anderson after the game. “Usually I
sneak one in.” When asked about the historical stat line, Anderson smiled and
said, “I’ve never had [a triple-double]. I’d been slumping, but Coach just told
me to work out of it. My teammates stuck with me, and now I’m coming out.”
The Tigers — unranked for the first time in three years —
hope they turned a corner with the move of freshman star Tyreke Evans to point
guard three games ago. “Tyreke should have been our point guard from the start
of the season,” admitted Calipari after the game. “Whose fault is that? Mine. He
now has the ball in his hands 90 percent of the time. We need to get to where he
has it 95 percent.”
The switch is one Evans — the team’s leading scorer, he had
25 points against Lamar — has welcomed. “Everybody seems to be on the same
page,” said Evans. “As point guard, I have to get into the lane and find people
for open shots. I’m used to having the ball in my hands, so I’m glad [Calipari]
put it in my hands, to let me show what I can do. I have to make the right pass,
and at the right time.” When he’s not scoring himself, that is.
• To cap off the weekend Sunday — back at the barn on Beale
— the Memphis Grizzlies ended a 13-game losing streak to Dallas by drubbing the
Mavericks, 102-82. The Griz shot an astounding 67 percent in the first quarter
and trailed only briefly in the third, beating their divisional rivals for the
first time at FedExForum. O.J. Mayo, Marc Gasol, Rudy Gay, and Hakim Warrick all
had at least 18 points for the Grizzlies as they ended an overall losing streak
of four games. A much younger team than the Mavs, the Grizzlies also were the
quicker, more energetic, more lively basketball team in this rare matinee. And
what is early January if not a time for youth and vigor?
Add the Ole Miss victory in the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s
Day and the first four days of 2009 were a winning streak unlike many the
Mid-South has seen as one year gave way to the next. With a general consensus
that 2008 is a year best left behind, why not start in the world of sports?
