Mourning Memphis

I'm a little sleepy this morning and a lot sad after staying up late to watch the Memphis Tigers unravel in the final two minutes of regulation to cough up a national championship to the Kansas Jayhawks. I did not get to sleep early enough, but saw a nightmare nonetheless.

What went wrong for the Tigers down the stretch? They looked like a team of destiny after Derrick Rose's banked jumper at the shot clock buzzer (Billy Packer - you don't think he called that one? Really?). Up nine points with the ball and just over two minutes left, the celebration was about to begin in San Antonio for Coach Cal and crew.

Then...disaster.

The story this morning is Calipari's decision not to take a timeout after Rose's free throw to set his defense, but that was not the reason Memphis lost the game. The Tigers are runners-up this morning for two reasons: sloppiness and lack of focus.

The Tigers have been loose and carefree all year, resulting in a one-loss record and place in the Final Four. With a championship on the line, however, the problems that Coach Cal has lived with/ignored all year surfaced to doom the Tigers. The sloppiness that Calipari failed to correct because he wanted his team to be fast and free cost him a national championship.

It began with an sloppy in-bounds pass that resulted in a momentum-swinging three-poniter for the Jayhawks. It continued with a sloppy hedge from Joey Dorsey that resulted in his fifth foul and disqualification. The Tigers then lost concentration at the free throw line as Douglas-Roberts and Rose combined for a sloppy 1-5 at the line in the final minutes of regulation. Finally, the Tigers sloppily defended the most obvious play in that final situation (the dribble hand-off - are you serious?), sloppily failed to foul as instructed and then sloppily fell apart in the overtime.

There is no doubt the Tigers lost their poise in the final moments. CDR could, and probably should, have been assessed a technical foul for slamming the basketball in the final minutes. Billy Packer applauded the referee's decision, but there is no "he was just mad at himself" exception for unsportsmanlike behavior like slamming down the basketball. Though it was not called, it was a glaring example of Calipari's failure to correct the sloppiness and lack of focus in his boys.

As for the final timeout, I don't fault Calipari for not calling it after Rose's free-throw. The assumption is that if Calipari called the timeout, the Tigers would have executed. What if they did not? What if Bill Self had set up a better play in that timeout (remember - Kansas did not have a timeout left)? The Tigers should have known what to do based on months of practice; they simply did not execute it.

Don't discount Kansas's role in all this either. Kansas's defense was terrific all night long. They made plays down the stretch - from Chalmer's shot to the made free-throws - that Memphis failed to make. In the end, however, the story of last night's game is the Memphis collapse.

Heartbreak Hotel indeed.