Ted's Take

You saw a tale of two teams: One team that controlled the boards; made its free throws; and ran with abandon and one team that had a complete breakdown of its offense and struggled against the press in the second half. Memphis played great attacking basketball yesterday and deserved its ranking. Georgetown played sluggish and its star player had a bad game. But the season is young. This was a great barometer for the team to measure how much it has to improve to be a top team and playing Memphis at Memphis was a good way to get a reality check this early in the season.

You saw a tale of two teams: One team that controlled the boards; made its free throws; and ran with abandon and one team that had a complete breakdown of its offense and struggled against the press in the second half. Memphis played great attacking basketball yesterday and deserved its ranking. Georgetown played sluggish and its star player had a bad game. But the season is young. This was a great barometer for the team to measure how much it has to improve to be a top team and playing Memphis at Memphis was a good way to get a reality check this early in the season. As an aside, I had to smile too in learning that Rod Strickland is now a role model of professionalism for the Memphis basketball program. As a fan, I once saw Rod eating a hot dog on his way to warm up 5 minutes before the game started. He was chewing the dog as he practiced his lay-up drills.

I am not happy with the way we have played the last two games but I am happy with the way we generated points in the last four games, three of which were on the road.

 We went into Tampa last Saturday and got a win, two points. We then went into Detroit and lost in a shootout, one point. We then laid an egg at home and lost to Montreal (no points) and then went to play the Islanders and lost in OT, one point. So four games - three on the road - we garner four of eight possible points. Not that bad of an eight day performance. However, we really needed to gain six of a possible eight points to be back on a run that gets us into contention and helps us to make up ground on other teams in the Eastern conference. Losing games at home is really hurting us.