ORLANDO, Fla. –The No. 6 seed Memphis Tigers are headed to the American Athletic Conference championship game after putting an end to the No. 10 seed Tulane Green Wave’s underdog story on Saturday night.
“There’s been a lot of negativity that we have encountered, and rightfully so in a lot of areas on — based on some of our games that we dropped,” Memphis head coach Josh Pastner said. “So it’s good to see those young men have a good time and enjoy the win and not take it for granted.”
Memphis freshman Dedric Lawson followed up his 22-point game against Tulsa on Friday night with 17 points, 9 rebounds and 5 assists against Tulane. Lawson’s size-speed combination has been a revelation for the Tigers this season and he’s really taken over the team throughout the AAC tournament.
Senior Louis Dabney willed the Green Wave out to a lead early, but the Tigers did not waste their time in erasing that deficit with a 6-0 run. Dabney has been the heart and soul of his team in the first two rounds and his performance is the only thing that kept the game from getting out of hand early on.
The senior was noticeably upset with his college career coming to an end after the miraculous tournament run that Tulane had put together.
“We just really ran out of gas, honestly and that’s the honest truth,” Dabney said. “I just wish I had another year to play with this great coach and these great group of guys and just I’m just sad that it had to go down this way.”
Memphis’ size advantage was paramount in the victory, with Tulane allowing 18 points in the paint and 6 second chance points in the first half alone. The Green Wave’s offense was disjointed and lacked the secondary source of scoring they had all tournament long with Dylan Osetkowski shooting just 33.3 percent in the game. The Tigers had compiled an 11-point advantage heading into halftime as senior Shaq Goodwin led all scorers with 9 points.
“I like to bring everybody into the five-man huddle and just tell them, whatever we’re going to do in this game, whatever we’re going to do, we’re going to do it together,” Goodwin said. “So, with that mindset, we win together, we lose together. We live with it. As long as we’re doing it together.”
With the 11-point deficit at halftime, Tulane found themselves in a similar position during their comeback win against Houston on Friday night, but the cards were just not in their favor this time around.
“We had great practices all the time,” Tulane head coach Ed Conroy said. “We needed those to keep getting better, but this tournament and coming here and so to see their hard work and their belief in something that they hadn’t been through before because so many of them are freshmen, to see their belief pay off and them have the joy that they had, these last couple days, and I even told them just now, the pain that they’re having in the locker room, it just, again, it goes to show you how special March is.”
On Friday night, Pastner credited his team’s dominant win over No. 3 seed Tulsa to his teams passing performance as they registered 13 assists. The Tigers carried their team-basketball philosophy over to the Saturday night’s game and it paid dividends as they dished out 17 assists.
“We know we’re going to have to play a great game if we want to have an opportunity to beat [UConn], so we’re going to have to play great,” Pastner said. “But we’re excited about the challenge, and it should be a high level game with against two high level teams tomorrow afternoon.”
Memphis will take on the UConn Huskies in the championship game of the American Athletic Conference tournament on Sunday at the Amway Center. Tip off is scheduled for 3:15 p.m.
