Tigers play role of Rebels
SAN ANTONIO — Bob Huggins last week compared it to the black and white hats of a cowboy movie. It’s more than that. It’s a pack mentality, a self-appointed hierarchy that always has considered certain college basketball teams unworthy of gracing a Final Four stage.
Memphis wears that tag today, much as UNLV did in 1991.
It’s bunk.
There hasn’t been a team like the Tigers still alive on a season’s final weekend since the Rebels’ pursuit of a second straight NCAA title ended in the national semifinals against Duke. Maybe with Cincinnati and Huggins in 1992. But the similarities between UNLV then and Memphis now are strikingly obvious.
The plot: A dominant team that comprises superior athletes from a conference ranked below the country’s top leagues led by a coach steadfastly defending his players crashes a party of elite programs.
It’s enough to make much of the assembled media ill.
The talk here is of history, of four No. 1 seeds advancing to this point for the first time, of today’s matchups at the Alamodome (UCLA-Memphis is to be followed by North Carolina-Kansas) possibly generating some of the better games the event has staged.
The talk about Memphis is what you would expect — its perceived brash image, the renegade stigma often applied to its coach and players, the idea of lacking the same pedigree of its Final Four peers. UNLV in 1991 joined Duke, North Carolina and Kansas in Indianapolis. It was the same then.
"It comes back to the fact the media doesn’t want Memphis here, just like they didn’t want UNLV in the early 1990s," said Mike DeCourcy, basketball writer for Sporting News, who has covered the game for 25 years, including the last 19 Final Fours.
"I remember sitting there in 1991 watching (former Rebels guard) Greg Anthony being interviewed and thinking everyone in that room was falling on their feet for Duke and Anthony is blowing them away and no one is hearing it. No one was noticing what a special person he was.
"The media wants big teams from big conferences, not Vegas or Cincinnati or Memphis. I sat there watching Anthony and thinking, ‘This guy is going places and will have a special career after he’s done playing.’ Nobody wanted to hear it. It’s the same now with (Memphis freshman guard) Derrick Rose, as good a player as this tournament has had in 20 years. He’s a great kid. Unselfish. No nonsense. No ego. But people don’t want to hear about that."
It’s too easy to talk instead about their flaws, their tattoos, their tendency to say bizarre things, their hazy backgrounds, their teammate who is sitting at home this week due to a failed drug test, their sideways hats. Judging others is natural for most, but taking the time to search beyond popular stereotypes requires genuine effort.
That’s not to say Memphis players don’t own some of the same blemishes those from UNLV did in 1991, that Tigers coach John Calipari doesn’t resemble Jerry Tarkanian in caring as much about a player’s ability to score and rebound as his character. That’s all coaches. People just don’t like to believe it.
Tarkanian remembers much the same roll-your-eyes attitude pointed at his UNLV team in 1991, when the media tripped over itself promoting a good-versus-evil story line before the game against Duke.
Hey, whatever sells, right?
"We had nicer kids than Duke," said Tarkanian, who on Calipari’s request addressed the Memphis team after its practice here Wednesday. "That whole (renegade) stuff was all (bleep) … I told the Memphis players how much they remind me of our ’91 team, how it defended and played with intensity. Derrick Rose is the best freshman point guard I have ever seen. They’re going to be tough to beat."
Memphis isn’t at the overall level of UNLV in 1991. If you graded out individual players on both teams, the Rebels win that contest every time. But the Tigers are 37-1, and Rose has career NBA All-Star plastered all over his game.
For as imposing as UNLV was 17 years ago, its win at No. 2 Arkansas wasn’t in near the same dominating manner as the way Memphis handled a top-five team in Texas last week. That was special.
Still, it didn’t change perception. Memphis now, like UNLV then, will wear that unworthy tag here until it is beaten or stands alone Monday evening.
Even then, views assuredly wouldn’t change much. That would take too much work. Some would have to actually use their brains.
"The other three teams here are part of the game’s royalty, and we’re not," Tigers guard Chris Douglas-Roberts said. "But we feel like we belong.
"I was 4 years old when UNLV was going to the Final Four, so I wasn’t watching much basketball. But after listening to Coach Tarkanian the other day, it’s a great compliment being (compared) to them."
Even if it means playing Lee Marvin to a bunch of John Waynes.
Ed Graney’s column is published Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday. He can be reached at 383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.
