Not a ton of Texas folks appear to be sticking around for the second game. The crowd is going to be way, way smaller here tonight. Without all the burnt orange, it’s pretty easy to see that Memphis has probably a 3 or 4-to-1 advantage over Michigan State in terms of fans. In a stadium this big, however, I’m not sure it will matter one iota.

I’m sitting directly across from the Memphis bench. Will be interesting to see how the team handles the odd setup. Looking at the box score from the first game here, Texas only made 7-of-22 from 3-point range and still won by 20 points. Stanford did not have the quickness on the perimeter to keep up with the Longhorns, and they got to the basket at will, which was reflected in the 49.2 field goal percentage.

Karl Hess, Bert Smith and Tom O’Neill are the officials. O’Neill is certainly familiar with the Tigers; he works a lot of their games in C-USA, including the championship game of the conference tournament.