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Where’s the Competition?

After watching Michael Beasley and Jacob Pullen lead the Kansas State Wildcats to a huge upset of the then-undefeated and #2 ranked Kansas Jayhawks, it hit me — only one unblemished team remains in college basketball. Only one team has yet to deal with failure. Only one has refused to bend or break down the stretch. However, is it because of true athletic superiority? Absolutely not.

While the Memphis Tigers are very talented and well-coached by John Calipari, they are not the best team in the country. In fact, I strongly question both their ability to compete against superior teams and win noteworthy games away from their home floor. Now before you start to think I’m crazy because I’m ragging on the number one team in the country, I suggest you closely examine this seasons’ schedule. I give serious props to Coach Cal for being thoroughly intelligent by beefing up the non-conference home schedule, but more importantly for taking advantage of road game selections.

Take your average college basketball fan. Direct him to the Memphis page at the website of your choice and have him pull up the schedule.

“Wow! These guys are good,” he’d say. “Memphis beat UConn, USC, Georgetown, Arizona and Gonzaga. These guys are going all the way!”

Not so fast. There is a lone statistic that always goes unnoticed these days in the eyes of the average basketball viewer. That stat is of course the quality road win. While all these wins look extremely impressive (don’t get me wrong.. they are), not a single one occurred on the road. Memphis has failed to go into a hostile environment and pull of a win — and they won’t even get the chance too. Calipari is so brilliant that he managed to piece together an incredibly strong schedule without having to play any Top 75 teams on the road. Pure genius.

Try and imagine Chris Douglas-Roberts and Derrick Rose going into Georgetown in front of that Washington D.C. crowd and pulling off a win. Hm. Could the Tigers have kept their composure at the Kennel in front of 20,000 screaming Gonzaga fans? The wheels are spinning now, aren’t they? Going into the desert and knocking off Arizona wouldn’t exactly be a cake walk either.

In today’s game, there is no greater advantage in college basketball than playing in your own arena in front of thousands and thousands of your own screaming fans. Ask Georgetown. Or Gonzaga. Or Arizona. I’m sure they would have leaped at the chance to face off against Memphis in their respective realms. While I’m not implying that Memphis would definitely lose on the road, I am entirely positive that the setting would be more competitive, more hostile and thus harder to claim victories as impressive as these. With the remaining games on the Memphis schedule, I’m going to almost guarantee that they run the table. Tennessee will present a serious challenge, but again — that game is at the FedEx Forum, where the Tigers have won 38 consecutive games and should be able to contain the Vols in a 40 minute barnburner.

When all is said and done though, I seriously hope John Calipari learns his lesson. His boys already play in the lackluster Conference-USA with a bunch of inferior teams. Memphis is going to take the conference, and even if they don’t — the selection committee would be more than happy to fork over an at-large bid. After the Tigers lose this season in the Sweet 16 or Elite Eight and start scratching their heads, I’m going to be sitting here grinning from ear to ear saying “I told you so.” Because therein lies the truth: the Memphis Tigers have pounced on every single opponent this entire regular season. Not once have they trailed in the second half nor have they had to face adversity. This team is in for a real surprise come March Madness when they face a red-hot fourth seed in the tourney and have no idea what it feels like to be trailing in a basketball game. At that point in time, Coach Cal will have wished he hadn’t made his regular season journey such a cakewalk.

Sam Panayotovich leads the “In Sam We Trust” movement at MVN’s Basketball University. He also covers various college basketball topics as well as the NBA Draft.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 2:23 am and is filed under Sam Panayotovich, College basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.