Gonzaga gets ready to take on Memphis for chance at Sweet 16
Gonzaga and Memphis are top 20 teams in the country when it comes to offensive tempo.
Players on the Gonzaga men’s basketball team ran down the hallways Thursday after the team’s first round win holding up five fingers. Five fingers, representing the five wins that the Zags now need to secure a coveted NCAA national championship.
To knock down another finger, GU will have to take out Penny Hardaway’s Memphis Tigers at 6:40 p.m. PST Saturday. The Tigers are coming off an 11-point win against the Boise State Broncos, the Mountain West Conference champions coached by former GU assistant Leon Rice.
Memphis has had what some would call a tumultuous season, going through stretches where the team would suffer three or four consecutive losses that called into question whether the AP preseason No. 12 program in the country would even make the NCAA tournament. Injuries kept Memphis from locking in a consistent lineup in the beginning of the season, as players struggled to gel together and find cohesion.
It was as freshman center James Duran started to find his footing that the Tigers began to grasp their’s collectively as the season went on. The 6-foot-11 big man from Pennsylvania is a scoring threat as well as defensive presence, scoring 12.1 point per game at 74.8% shooting at the rim and denying 2.1 blocks per game. His athleticism stacks up well against GU’s young big in Chet Holmgren, and both players should be a good challenge for one another when it comes to getting clean looks inside.
DeAndre Williams is another asset that the Tigers have working for them inside the paint, a 6-foot-9 forward who has taken up the No. 2 scoring mantle after the Tigers lost highly touted freshman Emoni Bates. Bates has been out since Jan. 27 with a back injury, but returned to the lineup as of Thursday where he got limited minutes.
And to contest Andrew Nembhard bringing the ball up, senior guard Alex Lomax will be handling the rock for a majority of Memphis’ possessions. Lomax leads the Tigers in assists and steals, and while he only averages 6.7 points per contest, he shoots at an above 50% clip meaning the Zags can’t forget about him on defense and risk him heating up.
Anyone who watched the Zags first performance out in the tournament against Georgia State saw how deflated their offensive attack looked in the first half. While the Zags were able to go on a screeching 21-0 to take the game out of GSU’s hands during the second half, they can’t expect to mount the same late game streak against the TIgers Saturday.
Memphis’ front court duo are agile and quick on their feet, meaning that Drew Timme, who dropped a game-high 32 points against GSU, won’t be as effective at drawing fouls against them in the low post. The Zags also shot 2-12 from deep to start their first round game, and while deep range shooting isn’t GU’s specialty, the team shoots 37.6% from three this year and relies on those looks to get the guards going.
The Tigers are also a streaky 3-point shooting team and shots beyond the arc have only accounted for 30.6% of their shots all season, but any team is liable to get hot and the Zags would need to catch up quick if Memphis gets ahead. Especially as winners of seven of their last eight games, the Tigers have become a threat for the Sweet 16 versus the national champion hopefuls Zags.
