The rankings for this week, straight up.
| NCAA Basketball Power Rankings |
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Memphis Tigers (22-0)
When you're a consensus No. 1, it's inevitable that pundits will begin picking on your flaws -- the main one for the Tigers being that they rank 339th nationally in free-throw percentage, at 58.1. But free throws are a problem that John Calipari can't entirely control, aside from making them a bigger point of emphasis in practice. Joey Dorsey and Antonio Anderson are atrocious from the stripe, but they need to be on the floor.
There is, however, an offensive issue that the Tigers can correct. The reason they rank 215th in the nation in three-point percentage (at 34.0) isn't because they're a terrible long-distance shooting team across the board; Chris Douglas-Roberts (50.0 percent) and Doneal Mack (37.4) are both respectable shooters. The problem is, through Tuesday, they've bewilderingly allowed three sub-28-percent three-point shooters -- Antonio Anderson, Andre Allen and Robert Dozier -- to take a combined 148 attempts from beyond the arc. To put this in perspective, of all the players on Power Rankings teams who have attempted at least 20 treys this season, there are only eight shooting under 30 percent. Three of them are from Memphis:
Worst Three-Point Shooters From Power Rankings Teams
Player Team 3A-M Pct.
Brian Butch Wisconsin 8-39 20.5
Raymar Morgan Mich. State 5-23 21.7
L.R. Mbah a Moute UCLA 5-22 22.7
Andre Allen Memphis 12-50 24.0
Robert Dozier Memphis 6-22 27.3
Antonio Anderson Memphis 21-76 27.6
Wayne Chism Tennessee 16-54 29.6
Donald Sloan Texas A&M 17-57 29.8
(Minimum 20 attempts, through Tuesday)
If the Tigers had redistributed the threes taken by Allen, Anderson, and Dozier into the hands of CD-R and Mack, they'd have made 62 of the 148, rather than 39. That's a total of 69 additional points, or 3.14 per game -- not an insignificant amount.
Next three: 2/9 vs. Central Florida, 2/13 vs. Houston, 2/16 at UAB
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Duke Blue Devils (20-1)
While I was sitting in the Dean Dome press room on Wednesday night, a couple of hours before tip of Duke-UNC, this hilarious dispatch came over one of the house security walkie-talkies:
"We are trying to find out who is distributing the yellow VCU T-shirts. These are not coming from the university. We need the person to cease and desist."
It seems that a Carolina student had either printed up or obtained VCU gear in hopes of reminding the Dukies of their first-round loss to the Rams last season. UNC security guards must've done a decent job enforcing their "cease and desist" order, as I didn't see many of the shirts by tip-off. Nor did I see, once the game started, a Blue Devils team that looked anything like the one that bowed out so early last season. This revamped, small-ball team is a force on both ends of the floor.
Next three: 2/9 vs. Boston College, 2/13 vs. Maryland, 2/17 at Wake Forest
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Kansas Jayhawks (22-1)
I spent the better part of last week in Lawrence working on Darnell Jackson, who has overcome far more than merely three years on the KU bench to become the team's heart and soul. I didn't have room to get into how KU's offense has changed with Jackson, a more traditional power forward, taking up the minutes that were vacated by Julian Wright, a hybrid point-forward. KU coach Bill Self said that the team's Xs and Os haven't necessarily been tweaked, but, rather than putting the ball in Wright's hands on nearly every trip, there is more of an "equal opportunity" situation for all five players to get more vanilla, high-percentage looks. "Julian had a flair for the spectacular," said Self. "He could make plays that nobody could see developing. This year we have a combination of more easy plays, and less spectacular ones than last year."
Next three: 2/9 vs. Baylor, 2/11 at Texas, 2/16 vs. Colorado
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UCLA Bruins (20-2)
After sitting in on a UCLA practice the day before the Bruins' win over Texas A&M in December of last season, I was awed by the quickness of Darren Collison. Coach Ben Howland literally had to ask Collison to allow the scout team to complete its first pass on offense -- that's how much he was disrupting things defensively. So it was sad to see Collison struggling with the aftereffects of an early MCL sprain early this season, because all facets of his game suffered when he wasn't at full speed. Once he got back to normal, over the Bruins' past four games, his stat lines exploded:
• 22 points, six assists, one turnover at Oregon
• 33 points, three assists, one turnover at Oregon State
• 14 points, nine assists, one turnover vs. Arizona State
• 12 points, seven assists, one turnover vs. Arizona
The 22- and 33-point games were both career-highs, and Collison's assist-to-turnover ratio during that stretch was 6.25-to-1. As Collison told the Press-Enterprise, "The injuries can set you back, mentally and physically. It's a whole lot different when you're physically healthy."
Next three: 2/7 at Washington State, 2/10 at Washington, 2/17 at USC
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Tennessee Volunteers (20-2)
Speaking of players getting their act together ... the switch has flipped back on for Vols senior guard Chris Lofton, whose shot is a thing of beauty when he's feeling confident. Less than a week after this column went up -- its topic: accepting the fact that Lofton was now a role player -- he began a five-game streak in which he's hit 51.9 percent of his threes and averaged 23.6 points. The fact that Lofton has re-assumed a starring role hasn't hurt the Vols, who have pulled into sole possession of the lead in the SEC. I just hope they can get as up for the Memphis game on Feb. 23 as the Tigers will be, even though it's scheduled in the week directly before Memphis meets Vanderbilt and Kentucky for a second time.
Next three: 2/9 at LSU, 2/13 vs. Arkansas, 2/16 at Georgia
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