ESPN Men's Basketball

Updated: November 2, 2006, 8:02 PM ET

Team preview: Memphis

Blue Ribbon Yearbook previews the 2006-07 college basketball season, exclusively on Insider.

Email Share

STAY AHEAD OF THE GAME Become an Insider Today

Blue Ribbon Yearbook

(Information in this team report is as of October 1.)

When John Calipari returned to the college basketball ranks in 2000-01 and called Memphis a "national program," many ill-informed basketball fans thought his statement brash, or at least overstated. But Calipari was right. Long before he came Memphis had already established a national reputation, going back to the days of Gene Bartow.

Much like Louisville and Cincinnati, and occasionally DePaul or Marquette to a certain extent, Memphis had earned a place on the national college basketball landscape. All Calipari did was talk about it out loud and use it to bring in some of the nation's top recruits.

The problem was that some of those recruits never fulfilled their potential as college basketball players -- not because they fell short of expectations at Memphis, but because they either never played for the Tigers or didn't stay very long. One can only imagine how good the Tigers would have been in their first five seasons under Calipari if Memphis signees such as Amare Stoudemire, Qyntel Woods, Kendrick Perkins and Ricky Sanchez had actually suited up for the Tigers instead of going straight to the NBA draft, or if Dajaun Wagner had played more than one season at Memphis before going pro.

Last year, for the first time in Calipari's six seasons at Memphis, that didn't happen. Everyone who mattered stuck around, and they were joined by six talented newcomers who made an immediate impact on the program. The results -- the best season in school history, with 30 regular-season wins, three more in the NCAA Tournament, a No. 1 seeding in the NCAA Tournament, a trip to the Elite Eight and both the Conference USA regular-season and tournament championships.

A national program, indeed.

"We've been a national program, even before last year," Calipari said. "But what happened last year was that every kid who was supposed to come be part of the program actually came and every kid who should have stayed, stayed. We didn't have anyone like Amare Stoudemire or Dajaun Wagner go to the NBA. The kind of stuff that happened to us for the past few years didn't happen. We kind of had everything fall into place with the roster.

"But when you have two kids drafted by the NBA and you lose another to the pros and you're graduating nine of our last 12 seniors like we have, those are some big holes to fill. But we've still got three or four prospects in the program now with NBA potential, so I think we're still going in the direction we want them to go into.

"We'll be on national television something like 13 times before our conference tournament, and that's the kind of stuff that keeps driving the program in the direction we want it to go."

National success also brings its own unique consequences. Star forward Rodney Carney stayed long enough to complete his eligibility before going to the NBA as the No. 16 pick in the first round. However, forward Shawne Williams followed his freshman season by entering the draft, with Calipari's blessing, and followed Carney as the No. 17 pick. Point guard Darius Washington Jr. took stock of his two seasons at Memphis and also entered the draft. Unfortunately for Washington and the Tigers, he ignored Calipari's advice and signed with an agent just before the draft. When no NBA team selected him, he had no chance to return to Memphis and improve his stock on the college level.

Now, Washington is gone for good, along with Carney, Williams and three replaceable reserves, as well as two assistants -- Tony Barbee, who left Memphis to become the head coach at UTEP in August, and Milt Wagner, the coordinator of operations who followed Barbee to El Paso.

Just don't expect the Tigers to waste any time or energy looking back or worrying about departed players and assistants. Not with the return of two starters (junior forward Joey Dorsey and sophomore guard Chris Douglas-Roberts) and eight lettermen and the addition of five more players who should make their own immediate impact, if they'll just accept the way things are done at Memphis and buy into Calipari's winning ways.

"On a national level, will we be as good as last year? Well ... I want to us to be a better team," Calipari said. "I don't know if we're going to be deeper or more talented or win as many, but let's try to be a better team.

"Last year one of the things that made us so good was our defense. In field-goal percentage defense we were third in the country. In shots blocked, I believe we were fifth in the country. We were in the top 10 in the country in rebounding. So we were really a good defensive team.

"We were one of the top-three scoring teams and one of the most efficient teams in the country in terms of points per possession, but we had more turnovers than we had assists for the first time in my coaching career. Yet, we still won 33 games. Think about that.

"We averaged more turnovers than assists and still win that many? That starts with defense."

Even the discrepancy between the turnovers (15.59 per game) and assists (15.29 per game) comes with a reasonable explanation. Some of it had to do with Washington's natural inclination toward playing the two and all that comes with it (his 111 turnovers and 110 assists provide one clue why he went un-drafted). Another reason, however, has something to do with the system Calipari installed last season.

At a time in his career when many veteran coaches in the spotlight seem to be tightening the leash on their players and micromanaging every offensive possession, 47-year-old Calipari opened his mind and his program to the possibilities of a new approach.

Calipari turned to Vance Walberg before Walberg was emerging from relative obscurity to become the head coach at Pepperdine and adopted many of the principles associated with Walberg's mix of frenetic full-court style of play, characterized by its aggressive, attacking approach on both ends of the floor.

As Calipari told CBS Sportsline.com this summer, "What Vance has created might be some of the most innovative stuff I've seen in the 20 years that I've been coaching. It's a heck of a way to play."

It certainly proved to be a heck of a way for Memphis to play. The Tigers finished second in the nation in defensive field-goal percentage (.380), eighth in blocked shots (6.4 per game), ninth in rebound margin (6.7 per game) and used it all to score 80.0 points per game, 12th nationally.

What Calipari liked about Walberg's system was the spacing, the way it opened up room for perimeter penetration that led to lay-ups or kick-out passes for open 3-pointers. For a team with athletic guards capable of creating havoc with opposing defenses and a coach with the vision to the see its potential, the system was the right fit. Eventually, Calipari found himself changing everything he had learned from Larry Brown and moving in a direction that defied the coaching norm.

"I've won a lot of games over the past 15 years doing what I do, so for me to toss it all and say that I'm doing this different stuff, you can imagine how much I think of it," Calipari said. "I've watched it. I've studied it. It took me three years to do it, but now it's the way we play."

With one year of experience in the new system, Calipari expects his team to be even more productive and efficient this time around.

"A lot of that had to do with our style of play," Calipari said. "We just [installed] our offense in a year ago, so we made some decisions that weren't great and some of the things we struggled with were because it was new to us, but I'll say this: it's helped us recruit and we've got kids around the country watching us play, saying, 'man, he lets you play. He lets you create, he lets you shoot, he lets you play.'

"What they don't understand is there's still a real structure to what we're doing. It's not chaos. There are sound principle to what we're doing, but the system gives you freedom to do the things you're good at and the things you like to do."

In addition to doing a more effective job of creating shots with penetration and passing and taking better care of the ball in the process, Calipari is looking for a higher shooting percentage from this season's team.

"I hope we make better choices, better shot selection, those kinds of things that will give us a better shooting percentage," Calipari said. "Our shooting percentage was only about 45 percent last year and we still scored 80 points a game. If we can score in the 80s and only shoot 45 percent and about 36 percent from the 3 and average more turnovers than assists, what happens if we shoot it better, make a higher percentage of 3s and have more assists than turnovers? You're talking another four, five, six more points per game."

To continue reading this article you must be an Insider