After watching the Tigers do drill after drill for a week, it was nice to see them get after each other in a scrimmage Sunday night. John Calipari likes to scrimmage in four-minute segments, and this time he switched up the teams often to get a look at how different combinations mesh. The first two segments were, to quote Cal, “awful.” There was a lot of jacking up threes and very little production. The first segment finished with a 5-4 score. “I know we’re a good defensive team,” he said, “but that’s ridiculous.” Shortly thereafter, the team picked things up. For the rest of practice, there was good pace, good energy, lots of playmaking. The team went full-court press for a few segments, then went halfcourt man-to-man, then zone, then finished with zone press.

A few other observations:

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Take a spin around Conference USA and what happened over the weekend. Click on the link to go to the full story.

MEMPHIS 38, RICE 35: Look who’s back for the Tigers. It’s Martin Hankins and Joe Doss. For Rice, the Owls got close, but couldn’t stop the Tigers when it counted.

HOUSTON 49, UAB 10: The Cougars put up 49 points, but everybody was talking about the defense. A leaky defense and four interceptions didn’t help the Blazers at all.

TULANE 41, SMU 34 (OT): Things are looking bleak in Mustang land after SMU gave up 342 yards and four touchdowns to Matt Forte.

UCF 44, TULSA 23: Hammered by South Florida, the Golden Knights started building for this win on Monday. Mistakes plagued Tulsa’s second straight conference loss.

NORTH CAROLINA 34, EAST CAROLINA 20: The Pirates fell behind 21-0, rallied to 21-17, but then lost momentum again in this loss.

I spent a couple of hours last week with Jeff Slipke of Southeastern Pond Management in Jackson, Tenn.

Among other things, we talked about the new craze among pond owners: Trophy crappie-fishing lakes.
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