Memphis is a well balanced team, with top 50 offense and defense. They don't have any particular offensive strengths, but they also mitigate their only weakness by not taking many threes. It results in an offensive efficiency ranked #36 despite not being top 70 in any individual category. They make up for a lack of threes by getting to the rim where they take a whopping 43% of their shots (compared to just 31% for us). 10% of their looks are dunks. With that style of play they are able to get to the free throw line a lot too.
Defense is more of a mixed bag. Memphis is #34 in forcing turnovers and top 20 in interior defense aided by the 7th best block rate in the country. But they are terrible on the defensive glass (#334) and they foul a lot (#290 free throw rate). But as we saw against another foul prone team in USF, we don't typically take advantage of that. The defensive scheme doesn't force many midrange shots (only 21%) and gives up a ton of threes (44% of shots allowed). They also give up a lot of assists, which is probably due to overplaying trying to force turnovers (which also probably leads to open threes). In the last 10 games their defense has taken a step back, ranking outside the top 100.
Davis and Williams are the obvious guys to focus on. Davis is actually not very efficient from the floor, with only a 46% effective field goal percentage. He takes a lot of midrange shots and is only 31% from three. But he gets to the free throw line 8 times per game where he shoots 87%. That gives him a 55% true shooting percentage. So the strategy should be to play off of Davis and let him shoot, but don't foul him or let him get into the paint where he will convert at 56% or dish out a 31 assist rate.
On offense we should take care of the ball and take advantage of overplays by looking for open threes, and then crash the boards. We have been good in those areas all year and Memphis is susceptible to it. I think this a good matchup for our offense, assuming we can actually make some threes.
