John Calipari's newly-implemented, penetrating style of offense calls for his young team to attack, attack, pass, attack, attack.
But it was only able to do that about half the time in its season-opener against UW-M in the first round of the Preseason NIT.
The rest of the game went more like press, steal, pass, dribble, dunk.
With its newfound depth, the No. 12 Tigers have employed a high-energy, full-court pressure defense that wreaked havoc on the Panthers.
In the first 12 minutes of Tuesday's game, the Tiger's quick feet and even quicker hands forced Milwaukee, which starts five seniors from last year's Sweet 16 team, into committing 13 turnovers.
Eight of those came by way of steal.
"The press is going to be a huge tool for us this year," said Memphis senior Rodney Carney. "If we don't get a steal then we force their offense to hurry up and make mistakes or we get the steal and take it back for easy layups.
"It really frustrates teams and really tires them out, and we're going to continue to do it."
During that 12-minute opening stretch the Tigers broke the game open, jumping out to a 27-9 lead.
For the game, the Tigers got 21 points off of Panther turnovers and out-scored UW-M 17-0 on fast breaks.
Once the Panthers began beating the Memphis press, the Tigers began locking down UW-M's half-court offense.
The Tigers forced the Panthers to take one bad shot after another as the shot clock wound down.
The stingy play extended out to the perimeter, holding the Panthers to just 22 percent shooting on the night, including 2 of 14 from beyond the arc.
"Our defense was really good, even in the half-court set," Calipari said. "We held them to 12 field goals for the game. Twelve!"
Along with its depth comes plenty of size, or as Calipari, put it "We're a long team."
"This defense is going to take a toll on teams," said freshman Antonio Anderson. "Everyone out there has a 6-9 wingspan or longer except for the point guards, and when you're that long, it makes it tough to pass the ball around us."
The Panthers also ran into plenty of resistance when they stopped passing and tried to shoot over the tall Tigers.
Memphis blocked 11 shots, 10 coming in the second half.
When you add that to the 19 turnovers it equates to 30 opportunities the Tigers took away.
With those kind of results it's unlikely Calipari will stray too far from his current practice regimen.
"Coach stressed defense to us more than anything else," said freshman Chris Douglas-Roberts. "That's what we work on the majority of the time in practice. We started the second half only up 12 points, and we had to step up our defense to extend our lead and that's what we did."
