Saturday, April 05, 2008

Memphis Mauls UCLA

Does Memphis's free throw shooting hurt them now?

They really are an awesome team.

Do you realize how good Chris Douglas-Roberts and Derrick Rose are? Against almost anyone else in the country Darren Collison is a defensive stopper. Against them he was abused. Westbrook could do ok on one of them, but when Collison was on the other he got destroyed.

Collison also let it carry over to his offense and as I predicted at the beginning of the tournament when I picked UCLA, I think Collison killed them in the halfcourt offense. Every time Billy Packer said (rightfully) that they weren't getting the ball to Kevin Love, it was because Collison was dribbling and dribbling and dribbling.

But it wasn't all his fault, they just couldn't make a shot. Several times in the second half UCLA had open shots to cut the lead to 4 or 5 and start to put some pressure on Memphis but the shots went in and out.

They held Memphis without a point for 4 minutes (from 9 left to 5 left) in the second half but managed only 3 points themselves over that span.

Joey Dorsey is such an interesting player. He had 15 rebounds and 0 points and during the game on the sidelines Coach Cal ripped him a new asshole. He's such a big tough guy who sometimes outwardly displays arrogance but you get the feeling he doesn't always believe in himself and sometimes he needs a kick in the ass to get himself motivated.

Memphis is a really good team with a lot of great players and they are really playing great right now. They can definitely win the national championship, and if they do they would be very deserving.

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