Memphis Tigers vs UTEP Miners Basketball Recap

UTEP 72, Memphis 67

Who needs reality TV shows when you can have Wednesday night's game between the University of Texas-El Paso and Memphis?

A game between two unranked teams managed to capture significant storylines and create the kind of narrative which makes sports so deliciously enthralling.

The longest conference winning streak of all time was originally fashioned in the latter half of the 1940s, when a legend named Adolph Rupp piloted the Kentucky Wildcats to 64 straight wins in the Southeastern Conference. That run of excellence was eventually stopped in 1950, and in the 60 years since the Baron of the Bluegrass did his thing in Lexington, Ky., no team had been able to match that record.

Not until the first month of 2010, that is.

With three more wins in Conference USA under first-year coach Josh Pastner, the men of Memphis hit 64 consecutive regular-season wins in the Southern-flavored league they inhabit. However, the architect of the Tigers' C-USA dominance is the figure who made the backdrop to Wednesday night's events so fully fascinating.

John Calipari coached Memphis to the first 61 wins in its seminal streak before Pastner, his former assistant and a onetime aide to Lute Olson at Arizona, took over in 2009 and hit "the big 6-4" with a Jan. 16 win over Rice. Calipari, as everyone knows by now, took his career ambitions to Kentucky last spring, inhabiting the same spot on the bench Mr. Rupp once occupied. College hoops fans were left with an incredible set of coincidences: On the very night that Memphis was trying to push past Kentucky and claim sole ownership of a rather remarkable record, the man who in many ways made Memphis what it was could be found in the Kentucky camp as the Wildcats' freshly-minted coach.

But if you think that was the full extent of the storyline in this game, you're only beginning to dig beneath the surface.

With Pastner - a former Calipari assistant - standing on the Memphis bench, the coach of the visiting UTEP Miners, Tony Barbee, also had an emotional stake in the outcome. While his first goal was clearly to move upward in the C-USA pecking order, Barbee surely hoped to be the one to deny Memphis its moment in the sun for very personal reasons.

Barbee served under Calipari at Memphis when " Coach Cal" began to control Conference USA with uncommon completeness. Miners-Tigers - with the shadows of Adolph Rupp lingering in the mist - represented a new-age duel between two of John Calipari's most trusted right-hand men. Now that Memphis is no longer likely to make the NCAA Tournament, this contest represented a chance for two young coaches to make their mark in a newly-barren conference. The urgency which filled FedEx Forum was borne of the realization that a fresh chapter was beginning for the programs who locked horns in the heart of Tennessee.

That was just the backdrop to UTEP-Memphis. Then the game unfolded and produced another improbable narrative.

One of UTEP's prime performers in this game - forward Derrick Caracter - used to play for Kentucky's rival, Louisville, and Calipari's professional rival, Rick Pitino. It was Caracter - in his exile from Louisville - who defended the honor of the Kentucky program and stopped Memphis's C-USA streak at 64.

The troubled but talented junior from Fanwood, N.J., snagged seven rebounds, blocked three shots, and scored 14 points, with two of them coming on a pair of pressure-packed free throws which gave UTEP a three-point lead after Memphis closed within one (65-64) at the 3:30 mark of the second half. In a game marked by many Kentucky-based footprints, Derrick Caracter stopped the streak John Calipari worked so hard to create, the same streak that Calipari's current fan base so fervently wanted to end.

Who needs soap operas or Russian novels? UTEP's poised denial of a milestone moment for Memphis represented the very best in sporting theater. Conference USA might not have a Final Four contender this year, but the league has become more fascinating and dramatic as a result.