When Memphis basketball I got out of the field in Philadelphia 24 days ago, it was the lowest point of the season.
The tigers, who entered as important favorites, had just lost – and they had done so embarrassing. Temple exceeded Memphis 49-25, and coach Penny Hardaway later said That the tigers “grew up from it”.
Sunday’s meeting in Fedexforum provided Memphis (20-4, 10-1 AAC) a chance to get a version of Revenge, and -although it is not exactly pretty – The Tigers won a 90-82 victory To finish their story with Temple (14-9, 6-4) this season and move on to the rest of their conference calendar.
“The guys were really aware that it was a vengeance game,” said Hardaway.
It was by no means a simple game. Memphis was without Tyrese Hunter starting leader, who missed the first match in his career (college and high school) with a persistent knee injury. Dante Harris started in his place and was excellent, marking a 14 -point top in 29 minutes.
And Memphis overturned the disparity of rebound, beating the temple 26-24 on the boards.
“We came out, did what we had to do,” said Center Dain Dainja, who had 18 points and eight rebounds. “Now it’s the next game.”
The defeat against Temple occurred a few weeks after the conference game and feared that this team was going to the same type of deposit that contained the team of last season, which was classified n ° 10 in the country in January in January Before losing four of the consecutive matches and finally missing the NCAA tournament. But these tigers have bounded by this defeat by winning seven consecutive, including Sunday’s match against the OWLS.
Memphis has an advance in a match on the UAB in the AAC classification, with a date of March 2 in Birmingham which is looming as the biggest match on the left on the calendar of the regular season of the AAC. The tigers crushed the UAB on Fedexforum during the seven game race, and although they showed vulnerability, they won the whole match except one.
Sunday’s match was a SLOG in the first half, the two teams find it difficult to take care of the ball. Temple lacked the star goalkeeper Jamal Mashburn Jr., the country’s second top scorer, while the tigers lacked Hunter. The offensive looked without him, but Harris asserted himself more in the second when they moved away.
The end followed a script that is also familiar with fans of Memphis this season. With the game apparently finished after PJ Haggerty struck a 3 pointer to put the tigers at the top of 15 with less than five minutes to play, they removed the feet of the proverbial gas and let the temple get closer to the buzzer final. This meant that the final margin was only eight points, although their performance in the second half has probably justified a better score line.
This margin affects Memphis’ perception and its position in computer rankings like the net, and this could matter when the seeds of the NCAA tournament are released next month. Hardaway knows it, and he wants to clean this the rest of the season.
“At the end of the matches, we don’t finish them as I really want,” he said. “A victory is a victory. But when you have 12, 13, 14, you want to make 20 years. Throughout the year, we allowed this driving to decrease and go almost by making a match with A few seconds to go.
Find the sports writer Jonah Dylan in [email protected] or on x @thejonahdylan.
This article originally appeared on Memphis’ commercial call: Inside the Memphis basketball revenge match against Temple, victorious of the sequence
