The First Shall Be Last

The U of M basketball season ends not with a bang but a whimper.

by Dennis Freeland

rom the team picked first in the preseason to the first team to depart the Conference USA tournament in Birmingham. It was a long and lousy basketball season for the University of Memphis.

The first signs of trouble appeared in the second game of the season. In a preseason NIT matchup, Gonzaga waltzed into The Pyramid and waxed the Tigers, building a 20-point lead in the first half before winning the game 88-73. Gonzaga shot a blistering 47.8 percent from behind the three-point arc while Memphis turned the ball over 20 times.

C-USA banner outside Birmingham’s convention arena.

“My only concern right now is on the defense,” Price said in his post-game press conference. “We might not even touch a ball offensively [in practice].”

That was November 16, 1998. Twenty-six games later Memphis would finish its season, allowing South Florida to shoot 53 percent in the second half en route to a 88-81 overtime victory in the first game of the C-USA tournament. Defensively the Tigers finished 11th in the 12-team league, the first Memphis team to allow 76 points a game in more than 20 years. In its 28th game, Memphis committed 28 turnovers.

Memphis coach Tic Price calls the USF game a macrocosm of the entire season. Marcus Moody scored with 13 seconds left in regulation to give Memphis a two-point lead, but South Florida countered with an easy basket from freshman Altron Jackson. Memphis didn’t call time out to set up a play. Instead, Dinno Daniels dribbled the ball with his head down, then missed an off-balance shot at the buzzer.

The Tigers committed two turnovers and a foul in the first two minutes of overtime and were simply not competitive in the final minutes. It was an ugly conclusion to the worst Tiger season since 1981, the year before Keith Lee arrived on campus.

There does not appear to be a giant from West Memphis or anywhere else waiting in the wings this time. With the team losing its leading scorer and rebounder in Omar Sneed, Tiger supporters are left to wonder where their program is headed.

On the Monday after the NCAA selected its field of 64, Price was somber but not entirely downcast. “I’ve been reflecting a lot since we lost to South Florida,” he says. “I’ve watched tape every day to critique ourselves.”

Price certainly doesn’t sound ready to panic. “I think the program is headed in the right direction,” he says, then adds a refrain Tiger fans have become accustomed to hearing from Memphis head coaches. “We’ve got a young team and we are building.”

Price, who arrived in Memphis two years ago this month, argues that he has had only one full recruiting class. “I didn’t come here to be part of a quick fix,” he says. “Although we had some setbacks this year, I think we have quality young men and talented young men. Our players hate to lose more than anyone. I think this can motivate them to get stronger and play harder.”

Price admits that this team did not play as hard as his first Memphis team. “That has probably been the most disappointing part of our season,” he says. “Last year we willed our kids to play hard, but this year’s team put up more resistance. I think that has do with youth and not knowing what it takes to win at this level.”

It all came down to defense, and the team’s failure there can be attributed to effort. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s where your pride kicks in,” Price says in his familiar, calm voice. “That’s why we were losing games, because we didn’t make the necessary stops. As much as we worked on it in practice, it was very disappointing.”

Price says he does not plan to make any staff changes following the first losing season in his five-year head-coaching career.

“My staff was a hard-working staff,” he argues. “They would be up with me till two or three in the morning looking at tape. Most nights we wouldn’t ask them to do it, they would just come by. We were fine with our preparations.”

But something went wrong. After a moment, Price adds with a small chuckle: “Coach Paul Bryant probably put it best when he said, ‘It’s not what the coach teaches, but what the players learn.’”

After watching his team get bullied in several games this season, Price says he wants a stronger team next year. “We’ve got to get more physical,” he says. “The weight room provides confidence. We have not had a chance to see the full results of our weight program — that is the key to our whole team.”

With Sneed and Ousley gone, Memphis will have to rely on center Kelly Wise and forward Paris London to take up the slack inside. Both will be returning sophomores. Wise started nine games but averaged only 16 minutes per contest. Still, he led the team in blocked shots and was second to Sneed in rebounding.

London played even less than Wise, starting just once, while playing 12 minutes a game. Both freshmen provided a lot of pop per minute. London would have averaged 16 points and 8 rebounds and Wise 15 points and 12 rebounds if they had sustained their production for 40 minutes. Unfortunately, by the same formula both would have fouled out of every game.

With Sneed gone, Price says the team’s offensive philosophy will change. “I certainly think we’ll be a different sort of team with Omar gone,” the coach says. “Our whole focus has been to go inside-out. Now we will look to be a little more perimeter-oriented.”

Either way, Price needs to find both an inside player and a guard who can knock down three-point shots. Someone willing to take a charge or hit the floor for a loose ball would be nice, too. The team has two scholarships available.

Shannon Foreman, a small forward from Northwest Mississippi Junior College, was the Tigers’ only early signee. Foreman averaged 16 points, 9 rebounds, 2.4 steals, and shot 51 percent from the field while leading his team to a 21-7 record. Price wishes the Baton Rouge native could have worn a Tiger jersey this year. “He might have been the missing link,” Price says. “He brings some toughness and he would have solidified our perimeter defense.”

The Tiger coach says he doesn’t expect any defections from his returning players, but he knows that there is always the possibility that someone will not make their grades or that a disgruntled player could transfer. Jimmie “Snap” Hunter, who was second in scoring and third in assists and steals despite playing in only 20 games, is a key figure. After sitting out the first semester-and-a-half of his college career, academics will always be a question mark for the Memphis Trezevant graduate. If Hunter is eligible to return, he and Marcus Moody should provide Price with the punch he needs for his “perimeter-oriented” offense.

But, despite what anyone says, the Tigers will miss Sneed, the only junior-college transfer in school history to score 1,000 points. When Sneed fouled out in overtime against South Florida, he took his time leaving the floor. He shook hands with his teammates and with the USF players. He shook hands with the three referees. But, as he walked off the court to a standing ovation which included fans from the various C-USA schools in attendance, Sneed avoided his head coach. The two men didn’t speak.

“It’s nothing to make a big deal over,” Sneed said after the game. “Coach and I are good friends. He hugged me in the locker room.”

For his part, Price says he is astounded that anyone would try to make a big deal out of it. “Omar knows how I feel about him,” Price says. “I love my players, period. I don’t do anything for public approval. There is not anything fake here. I hugged him and Jermaine. Behind closed doors we had our moment.

“I’m outdone by that comment, to be honest with you,” Price continues. “My players know how I feel about them. I respect all of them. There’s been so much negative stuff around me lately, but I don’t get caught up in all of that. I just remove myself from anyone who is being negative and I’ve asked my players to do the same.”

There will surely be more negative comments for Price. Memphis is a program accustomed to going to the NCAA tournament, and Price understands that. “We stress to our players that we expect to be in the NCAA, that’s part of being a Memphis Tiger. That’s what I came here for,” he says. “It hurts when you’re not a part of it. That is our goal — to get to that point.”

For the sake of his future as a basketball coach, Price had better get there soon. That’s no secret in this impatient city.

Notes From Birmingham

The Memphis loss in the first round hurt the league and the host city. The Tigers always bring one of the largest contingents of fans and reporters to league tournaments. After the loss, Memphis reporters left Birmingham and headed straight for the SEC tournament in Atlanta. That story then dominated local news reports for the rest of the week. That hurts the school and the league. … The buzz among Memphis reporters at the tournament concerned the next radio voice of the Tigers. WMC-AM won the rights to broadcast Tiger games for the next three years. That could leave Dave Woloshin, whose daily sports talk show is on WREC-AM, a competing station, out in the cold. WMC gets to pick the announcer, but the university has veto power. … Both Birmingham papers ran stories which would have fit perfectly here in the Bluff City. The questions were: Will Birmingham support a C-USA tournament? Will UAB fans support the tourney? What if the Blazers lose their first game? Can a C-USA tournament succeed in the heart of SEC territory? … Which brings us to the site for the C-USA tournament in 2000 — Memphis. Will the city be in the mood to host a conference tournament? Will the host team be a contender? Stay tuned.