Prior to their four-year run of Elite 8, Elite 8, NC runner-up, and Sweet 16 (probably only because Cal was already itching to go to Lexington and phoned it in against Missouri), they were in a power basketball conference and had one sub .500 year. I don’t really care whether they’re ahead in this poll or not, but the “put them in the Big East or ACC” argument is truly baseless.

I believe that one of the points made against their inclusion was that they had no title. I’d assume, from that, that the poster thinks that NCAA tournament performance is important. You can’t have it both ways. Either their tournament performance indicated that they were a national power even when playing in a weak conference, or tournament performance (lacking a title) is irrelevant. Personally, I’d have to agree with the others — when you get past the top 5 or so, it’s hard to fairly rank the next 10.

*Weakass conference
*No title
*Missed tourney several times
*sub .500 record 1 year

Seriously. Put them in the Big East or ACC and they might not even be .500 for the decade.

For now, he’s surrounded himself with people he knows and trusts and upon whom he’ll rely more heavily than Cal did with HIS assistants (Robic aside). We jokingly refer to Josh as the anti-Calipari, meaning a great big bundle of humility and positivity who talks TO people and not THROUGH them. I believe he could have the Tigers in the Sweet Sixteen conversation by late winter/early spring of the ‘10/’11 season.

In his brief time as head coach there, he has done a masterful job of keeping the program relevant on the national recruiting scene (the Bartons?!?), while at the same time rebuilding the program’s relationship with the city’s high school programs. In his efforts to make Memphis a national recruiting power, Calipari opted to let the local ties slide a bit. Can’t fault his sucess, obviously. I mean, if you study what Calipari previously had coming to Memphis this fall, there’s a greater understanding of why it was so difficult for Memphis fans to stomach his abrupt departure. The class he had coming to Memphis was better than the one he took to Kentucky.

For that same reason, Josh won’t get beat up by the media or the fans (well, at least not by the fans; Memphis print media tries too hard to inject itself into the discussion). I say he won’t get beat up by their fans, because their expectations were greatly tempered by the jolt of Calipari’s leaving them. They know that with Wall, Cousins, Henry, Coleman and Dennis added to a pretty solid roster of returning players that they were going to be a preseason favorite with KU to win it all. Their fans were licking their chops for a rematch with the Jayhawks–their hopes were obviously dashed.

Wishes aside, Pastner’s connections in Texas, out west and via his father’s AAU leadership should help Memphis remain a prominent national player, sooner rather than later. I foresee Josh having his Tigers once more annoying folks all over the country within twenty four months. I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a conference change for the Tigers within the next two years, too, something that could kill the “overrated” talk once and for all, should they keep it rolling.

I’ll be honest, when each of the RTC writers did our individual rankings before this series was started, I had Memphis in the 9-13 range. I probably moved them 3 or 4 times before I turned in my official rankings to the others. I think this is because once you get to that 8th team, there’s little difference between them and, say, team #13. To be sure, there’s enough there in the numbers to put Memphis here in my opinion, but if you wanted to make that argument for a few other squads I probably wouldn’t disagree with you, depending on who you nominated. I agree with NVR that Memphis had a heck of a run there in the late part of the decade and, by the numbers, it’s tough to beat. I’ll be interested to hear what you think of the list when it’s complete in a week or so, and where you would have put everyone, including any teams that didn’t make it onto our list. Many thanks for the comment.

John Stevens (who, like Rush The Court, is now on Facebook)
RTC