Memphis Basketball: 3 takeaways from home exhibition loss to UNC Tar Heels

Memphis Basketball was the host for Tuesday's charity exhibition matchup against the UNC Tar Heels, a preseason top-10 team. However, they were without last season's ACC Player of the Year guard, RJ Davis, due to a recent injury.

The Tigers did get off to a strong start and had a halftime lead. But a big run by the Heels combined with mistakes from the home team allowed UNC to get the 84-76 victory. The good news for Memphis is that the game doesn't count against them. Plus, they got some good information from the matchup.

Here are some takeaways from the game.

PJ Haggerty the clear go-to guy

As a redshirt freshman at Tulsa, Haggerty was one of the top scorers in the country, averaging 21.2 ppg. He looks to remain an elite scorer over at Memphis, going for a team-high 24 points on 8/14 shooting and 7/9 from the line. Colby Rogers and Tyrese Hunter combined for 20 on 7/23 shooting which isn't going to be good enough to beat UNC. But at least the Tigers know they have a potent scorer to give the ball to.

Dain Dainja's rough offense, good defensive game

One of the other key newcomers on the team was Dainja, a transfer from Illinois who showed flashes of being an all-league center. He had a strong opening 30 seconds but wasn't heard from offensively for the rest of the game, finishing with five points on 1/6 FT shooting. However, he did have three blocks, more than he had in any game last season. Between that and his slimmed-down figure, Dainja's defensive improvements are a legit positive sign for when the team has Moussa Cisse back for 40 minutes of defensive anchoring.

22 turnovers to just 12 assists

Where Memphis lost the game last night was in the second half, where constant mistakes and offensive miscues allowed the Tar Heels to make a big run. After the game, Coach Penny Hardaway said that the team didn't run plays to not show anything for future opponents. And while that may be true, there's a real concern that the team doesn't have real distributors, with backcup Baraka Okojie leading the team with four assists off the bench.

Getting outplay by a UNC team without RJ Davis isn't great but all in all, Memphis Basketball had legit signs of being a top-25 caliber team. We'll see if they can clean up some of the mistakes by the season opener.