NCAA Basketball: Purdue and Memphis among week’s biggest winners and losers
Memphis Tigers
Coming into the season, Memphis had a boatload of talent and some were wondering if this was a Final Four team. Suddenly, eight games in and after three straight losses there are rumblings that Penny Hardaway’s seat might be getting warm.
Coming into this week the Tigers were looking to right themselves after losing by 19 to Iowa State in the NIT Season Tip-Off. Instead of righting the ship, Memphis continues to spiral after two head-scratching losses this week.
Two of Memphis’ major problems, turnovers, and free throw shooting reared their head in the loss to Iowa State shooting 65% and committing 22 turnovers and it didn’t get better this week. While those numbers improved in the 82-79 loss to Georgia, the Bulldogs shot twice as many free throws (35) as Memphis (17) and that ended up making a big difference with Georgia outscoring the Tigers by 13 at the line.
In Saturday’s loss to Mississippi, it was an Iowa State redux as Memphis turned the ball over 20 times, and despite getting to the line 37 times, they made just 23 of them, falling 67-63. It doesn’t matter how much talent is on the roster, if you can’t make free throws and don’t value the basketball it makes games really difficult to win.
Arizona State Sun Devils
Speaking of hot seats there may not be one hotter than the one Bobby Hurley is sitting on at Arizona State. The 3-6 Sun Devils began the year by losing to UC-Riverside on a half-court buzzer-beater and it appears they haven’t recovered. After struggling to beat an equally spiraling Oregon on Sunday night they have now lost five of six in a row and it hasn’t been pretty in the process, with the only one of those losses being by less than 10 points.
But it was this week where things got really ugly for the Sun Devils, especially on Wednesday for their league opener against Washington State. Not only did they lose by 22, but the numbers are also almost unbelievable. They shot 21% from the field, went 3-26, yes 3-26 from three-point land, and 2-8 from the free-throw line, and did I mention they scored just 29 points in the 51-29 loss.
So, what did Arizona State do for an encore on the road against Oregon? They shot 46% from the field and 38% from deep but turned the ball over 16 times and made 58% of their free throws in getting a 69-67 overtime win.