The Tigers got their first win, 72-68, in an ugly game against the Universal All-Stars Tuesday night in front of an estimated 5,500 fans at the Pyramid.
Though his team was undoubtedly not in regular season form, as it missed open shots and bobbled passes, head coach John Calipari was happy with what he got out of the eight players that saw the floor.
“I loved our effort,” Calipari said. “They missed shots, but they were tight.”
Calipari said he was especially pleased with the effort he got from his veterans. Senior center Earl Barron had 23 points and 13 rebounds. Fellow senior John Grice had 10 points and 10 rebounds in his new role as power forward.
“You’ve got to love Earl going after balls,” Calipari said. “John Grice has got a job to do—he’s got to rebound. He got 10 rebounds.”
Barron’s 23 points led all scorers and the two seniors were the only players to post double-doubles in the game.
As for the rest of the team, nobody did anything earth shattering.
Freshman Rodney Carney looked comfortable in his first collegiate contest. His stat line, 4-16 shooting and 0-7 from the three-point line, wasn’t great. The signs were there, though.
He wasn’t lost in the offense, nor was he afraid to shoot the ball. He also had seven rebounds, a couple of assists, a block and a steal.
The 6-7 small forward who shot deadeye at the Tigers’ open scrimmage at the Pyramid said the missed shots were from nervousness.
“It must have been jitters,” Carney said. “A lot of the shots I took, I knew I could make.”
His next time to make those shots will be Nov. 14 when Memphis travels to New York to play Syracuse.
Calipari thinks his team will be ready by then. He said what he saw from his team is exactly what he thought he would see.
“We looked about what I thought we would look like,” he said after the game. “It’ll be alright. It’s the makings of a good team.”
The Tigers hadn’t shaken all the rust off from the summer and didn’t look sharp, but Calipari likes that he got to see those things in an exhibition game rather than in the regular season.
“It shows me that they don’t understand what I’m trying to get them to do,” he said.
Calipari was talking about his players knowing all of the little things he would like them to do. Things like when to take shots, when to slow it up or when to feed the post.
Calipari said point guard Antonio Burks has the idea, but still needs to make some adjustments.
“Antonio had nine assists and two turnovers,” Calipari said. “That’s terrific. He would have had 15 (assists) if guys weren’t missing when they were wide open.
“But he was trying to avoid everything. He was looking for degree of difficulty on his shot.”
The coach was referring to a play when Burks, who finished with 12 points, badly missed a backdoor lay up when Calipari said he should have gone straight at the basket.
There were also other Tigers involved in Tuesday night’s contest outside of the ones that wore white jerseys.
Former Tigers Jermaine Ousley and Shamel Jones received warm welcomes from the Memphis crowd during the starting line-ups. The post players played for the All-Stars’ team.
Jones finished the game with 16 points, five rebounds and seven fouls in a game with unlimited time outs and fouls while Ousley scored eight points to go with six rebounds.
