After a late night Thursday, I had to get up early for practice double-duty at FedExForum. I watched Pepperdine work out in the morning, and then the Tigers came in during the afternoon and did some light drills plus a walkthrough. The only real news to report from practice is that forward Shawn Taggart was sick and did not participate. Not sure of his status for tomorrow; obviously, that will be determined by how he feels. I also talked briefly with recruit Matt Simpkins and his mother, who flew in from California for his official visit. I’ll talk more with him after the game tomorrow to get his impressions of Memphis; it didn’t make much sense to do a story on him after he’d been in town literally for 30 minutes. One thing I found interesting is that his mother was very familiar with the team; she knew all the players, etc. Obviously, she’s been watching Memphis on TV very carefully.

If Memphis gets Simpkins, the fallout from the Morris twins saga will be a distant memory. A class with Angel Garcia (ranked 27th by Rivals.com) and Matt Simpkins (ranked 47th by Rivals.com) would be a better frontcourt on paper than the twins (ranked 37th and 72nd), who are now going to Kansas after originally committing to Memphis, then de-commiting when the Tigers sealed the deal with Garcia.

As far as last night’s game, I don’t know what I can say that hasn’t already been said. Memphis shot the ball great, and Siena was overmatched. Siena’s only hope to keep the game competitive was to really pack in its defense and hope the Tigers missed shots. They didn’t, and that was that. I blogged before the game that the crowd was disappointing right before tip-off, but the arena filled in nicely. It was a nice, solid crowd, though obviously not as great as Georgetown and Arizona. Last year, it would have been the best crowd of the season.