SMU Beats Memphis
DALLAS — SMU rebounded from its first loss of the season with an 80-68 blowout of Memphis on Saturday at Moody Coliseum.
The 13th-ranked Mustangs were the last undefeated team in Division I until an 89-80 loss at Temple last Sunday. SMU (19-1, 8-1 American Athletic Conference) clearly didn’t spend the week sulking.
SMU point guard Nic Moore led a quartet of double-digit scorers with 22 points. Guard Shake Milton scored 15, and forward Ben Moore and guard Sterling Brown each had 12.
Forward Markus Kennedy just missed a double-double and becoming SMU’s fifth double-digit scorer, finishing with nine points and 10 rebounds. Forward Jordan Tolbert led all rebounders with 14.
Memphis (13-8, 4-4) was led by Shaq Goodwin’s 18 points. Goodwin, coming off a 35-point performance against Central Florida, played just 13 minutes in the first half because of foul trouble and fouled out with 6:28 left.
Although SMU’s lead ballooned in the second half, the Mustangs shot below 40 percent fromthe field and committed 14 fouls in the final 20 minutes to leave Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown feeling grumpy.
“I didn’t think we played with a lot of discipline in the second half,” he said. “I’m not a happy camper right now.
“I hope the film makes me a liar, but I don’t think so.”
With the Mustangs banned from postseason play because of
NCAA violations, SMU has just 10 more games to make its mark. SMU spent the week between games working on itself.
“It gave us a lot of time to just work on everything we didn’t do well in the Temple game,” forward Jordan Tolbert said. “And just (work on) ourselves, getting back to the principles of what we do and how we play.”
SMU’s lead swelled to more than 20 points with 15:50 left when Nic Moore hit the second of back-to-back 3-pointers for a 53-32 advantage.
The SMU lead grew to 25 points with 13:28 remaining when Milton hit two free throws to go up 62-37.
Memphis improved its shooting percentage by 20 points in the second half, finishing at 32.8 percent for the game, but it wasn’t enough to keep up with SMU.
“That’s been an Achilles heel for us all year long, our two-point shooting,” Memphis coach Josh Pastner said. “Tonight that came true again. We got a lot of shots in the paint, we’ve just got to finish. … We just dug ourselves a hole.”
Memphis also got production from guard Jeremiah Martin with 11 points as well as 10 points each from guard Ricky Tarrant Jr. and guard Avery Woodson.
SMU opened up a double-digit lead midway through the first half and never lost it to carry a 39-27 lead into the break.
Much of SMU’s work in the first half was done at the free throw line. The Mustangs made 17 of 25. Memphis made 5 of 7 at the line.
“I felt early on we played on our heels,” Pastner said. “We’re a team that’s best when we’re the aggressor. We were attacking but hoping that we would get the foul called instead of attacking the rim and scoring the ball and letting the foul be a bonus for us.”
Forward Ben Moore led SMU in the first half with 10 points on 4-of-5 shooting from the field. Overall, the Mustangs shot 41.7 percent in the first 20 minutes and the Tigers struggled at 23.7 percent (9 of 38).
Memphis got to the line 20 times in the second half, making 14 free throws, to briefly put pressure on SMU.
“The second half, they were in the bonus after three minutes,” Brown said. “We thought we were in a track meet.”
