Dan Wolken - Quick hitters from Sunday’s (11/18) practice

Quick hitters from Sunday’s practice
Posted by Dan Wolken

John Calipari returned from Boston, where he spent Saturday watching Tyreke Evans, the Tigers’ top recruit, play in a high school tournament. Evans, who is signing in the spring, will make his visit to Memphis later in the season. My sense is that the Tigers are in great shape with Evans and that one of the reasons he’s holding off on a commitment is that he wants to make sure of Derrick Rose’s plans for next season. It wouldn’t make sense for Evans to sign with Memphis if Rose is going to stay for a second college season (not very likely, in my opinion).

- Spoke briefly with former Tiger Clyde Wade. He’s starting graduate school at the U of M next semester. He said he just recently spoke to Jeremy Hunt, who is back in Poland playing with a different team. (Hunt signed with one Polish team but didn’t pass the physical due to his career-long knee issues.)

– Robert Dozier was feeling ill Sunday and didn’t practice. Joey Dorsey went through most of the practice but his shoulder flared up with about 15 minutes to go and he shut it down. Again, don’t panic about the shoulder. Obviously, it’s not an ideal situation, but this injury is something that Joey can play with and play effectively with. He just has to continue getting treatment and be able to deal with some discomfort. That’s part of playing sports.

– The two main emphases of the practice were preventing dribble penetration and transition defense, which were the most obvious problems for Memphis in New York. The latter is understandable, since Memphis hasn’t worked at all on its transition D. The former is inexcusible, especially since the biggest culprits were Antonio Anderson and Derrick Rose, who Memphis is counting on to be elite perimeter defenders. Memphis’ failure to contain the penetration of UConn’s guards was the main reason the Tigers’ big guys got in so much foul trouble.

– One little note, which illustrates (yet again) just how freakishly athletic Rose is. During a slow moment in practice, Chris Douglas-Roberts — a heck of an athlete in his own right — tried twice to dunk with his left hand and didn’t even come close. Rose non-chalantly went up to the rim and dunked it easily with his left.