Kevin O’Neill returns to Memphis tomorrow night. Many Tigers fans will remember him as the head coach at Marquette and Tennessee. He had moderate success at those two places but most folks remember him by his…hmmm….colorful sideline language. I wonder what will spew from his lips when the Tigers lay a beat down on the Wildcats?

I don’t think the Tigers will have a let down against the Wildcats. Remember the last regular season loss the Tigers had was against them. So you can bet that they have been reminded of that fact by Cal.
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Look, I give ESPN’s Joe Lunardi full credit for finding a way to take a pretty fruitless exercise — projecting the NCAA Tournament bracket — and using it to turn himself into a quasi-ESPN celebrity when he’s not doing his real job as a college administrator at St. Joseph’s.

But the dude has to stop with all this talk about a perfect season for Memphis. After the Tigers beat Georgetown last Saturday, Lunardi immediately went on ESPN and started babbling about Memphis running the table. And today, he posted an article on ESPN.com — it’s a subscriber-only article, so I won’t link it here — flat-out predicting that Memphis would be 34-0 entering the NCAA Tournament.

My advice to Lunardi: Stick to what you know best, which is posting your bracket five minutes before the real one comes out, then proclaiming for the next full year that you’ve projeted 64 of 65 teams correctly. What a racket.

Anyway, the problem I have with people like Lunardi is that when you see basketball strictly within a prism of numbers and RPIs and power ratings, the game becomes two-dimensional. It’s hard for them to wrap their arms around emotion, timing, injuries, luck, officiating, and all the other little factors that make the game three-dimensional.

Here’s a more appropriate way to look at Memphis. After what should be a very tough test Saturday, the Tigers go into a very manageable portion of their schedule with Siena, Pepperdine, East Carolina, Marshall and Rice (the latter two on the road). It’s the four games after that — Southern Miss (home), Tulsa (road), Gonzaga (home), Houston (road) — that will tell us a lot about what chances the Tigers have to go undefeated. Southern Miss, of course, nearly beat the Tigers at home last year. Tulsa will be a tough environment against a team that always plays well against Memphis (last year’s game at Tulsa was teetering on the edge until midway through the second half, when a couple buckets kind of turned momentum). Gonzaga, of course, is projected to be a difficult game. And winning at Houston will be a handful, as that game could very well determine whether Houston is an NCAA Tournament team or not, much like UAB two years ago.

If Memphis rolls through that and gets to 20-0 on Feb. 1, then we can start to entertain conversation about an unbeaten season. Until then, it’s a ridiculous exercise that will only set you up to look silly. Then again, when you’re a recruiting guru or bracketologist, nobody really holds you accountable for bad predictions.

Rookie point guard Mike Conley participated in a second straight contact practice, and continued to provide encouraging signs that his return is near.

Head coach Marc Iavaroni and the medical staff said Thursday that the decision for Conley to resume play in an NBA game will be mostly up to Conley. The fourth overall draft pick said he isn’t working with a specific timetable.

He simply wants to feel confident that his right shoulder can absorb routine physical punishment. Conley’s shoulder received high marks during one sequence when he set a hard pick to free up a teammate for an open jump shot.

Looking for a high school game to watch during the holiday break? If so, here is a schedule of some of the local tournament games.

Local Basketball Tournaments

Dragon Fire Girls Invitational
At Collierville High School

Dec. 26
First round
Northside 88, Fayette-Ware 63
White Station 61, Manassas 48
Bolton 61, Hamilton 51
Fairley 59, Houston 47
Millington 57, Kirby 22
St. Agnes 59, Byhalia 46
Germantown 70, Raleigh-Egypt 33
Collierville 57, Northwest 19
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There is a good story in this morning’s Philadelphia Daily News with more information on the shooting involving Tigers recruit Tyreke Evans, which came to light last weekend.

It appears as though authorities have now ruled out a charge against Tyreke Evans, who was driving the car from which gunshots were fired on Nov. 25, killing a 19-year old in the Philadelphia area. The shooter, Jamar Evans (Tyreke’s cousin), has turned himself into authorities.

My sources have indicated that this incident won’t have an impact on the Tigers’ recruitment of Evans, assuming the situation is as it appears to be. But certainly, whichever program gets Evans will take a public relations hit and have some questions to answer. Though Evans may not have been directly involved in the crime, he clearly got caught up in the middle of gang-related activity, which brings up a whole set of issues that must be addressed by both Evans and the program he goes to.

And this time I did go over the edge. This is really long and there might be typos. But frustration leads to me just start typing and not worrying too much about details.

After thinking about it some there is something that came to me that has me almost laughing and crying at the same time.

I’m a Memphis Tigers fan, supporter and alumnus. The simliarities between the Memphis program’s success since 2003 and my favorite baseball team, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim successes since 2002 are quite profound. The responses from the fan bases are also very similar if you look at message boards.
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A number of people have asked me over the last few weeks which game on the Tigers’ schedule will provide their first loss of the season. My answer was never Georgetown — in fact, I predicted a Memphis win on this blog some time ago — but rather Saturday’s game against Arizona. Keep in mind, I’m not predicting that Memphis will lose. But I think it’s the toughest and most dangerous game of the year for a variety of reasons.

1. The “Letdown” effect. Quite simply, it will be difficult if not impossible for the Tigers to bring the same kind of emotion and intensity Saturday that they brought to the Georgetown game. It’s human nature. Especially in college sports, it’s pretty easy to pinpoint when a team will have a letdown. There was such a rush of emotion and satisfaction in beating Georgetown, John Calipari will have a huge task on his hands trying to get the Tigers to get back “up” once again, no matter who the opponent is.

2. Style of play. It will be interesting to see what Arizona tries to do against the Tigers. But in last year’s game, the Wildcats were certainly comfortable getting up and down the court with Memphis. Unlike Georgetown, Arizona has the personnel to play fast and win a game in the 80s.

3. The Killer B’s. The Tigers are a great defensive team. But with guys like Chase Budinger and Jerryd Bayless, you can play good defense and they can still make crazy fallaway jumpers in late shot clock situations. Budinger is a really tough matchup and as pure of a catch-and-shoot guy as you’ll find.

4. Tested team. Even though Georgetown is a top-10 team, I’m not sure the Hoyas were really prepared to play a team like Memphis since their non-conference schedule had been pretty light to that point. Arizona is a different animal. They took Kansas to overtime at Kansas (Arizona really should have won the game in regulation), beat Texas A&M at home, beat Illinois in Chicago and got a nice road win at UNLV. They won’t be shaken by the crowd or by the opponent.