No. 17 Memphis has had some close calls — but just one slip-up — on its way to the top of the American Athletic Conference this season.The Tigers will have a chance to avenge that loss on Sunday afternoon when they host Temple in another conference battle.When the teams met on Jan. 16 in Philadelphia, the Owls pulled off an 88-81 upset by doing two crucial things: Outshooting the nation’s best 3-point-shooting team from beyond the arc and dominating the glass.Temple made 9 of 22 3-pointers compared with the Tigers’ 6-of-21 showing. Perhaps most importantly, the Owls nearly doubled them on the boards 49-25 as 6-foot-4 senior guard Shane Dezonie grabbed a game-high 13 rebounds to go with 15 points.Other than that, Memphis (19-4, 9-1) has survived its close games in league action, winning three contests decided by four points or less and rallying down the stretch on Jan. 23 to subdue visiting Wichita State 61-53.The Tigers’ latest game wasn’t in doubt over the last 10 minutes as Memphis cruised to an 83-71 verdict Wednesday at home against Tulsa.Guard PJ Haggerty scored an efficient 23 points in his first game against his former team. Haggerty, who averaged 21.2 points per game last season for the Golden Hurricane, is averaging 21.7 points a game this season and has hit 51.1 percent of his field-goal attempts.While Haggerty has been a model of consistency, Tigers coach Penny Hardaway said he felt the need to check on him before he faced Tulsa.”Playing your old team, they’re mad that he left,” Hardaway said. “And they were going to try to take him out of the game.”That didn’t work, nor did whatever was tried on Dain Dainja. The Illinois transfer had 21 points, six rebounds, four assists, four blocked shots and three steals in a performance that raised his scoring average to 12.2 ppg.Memphis upped its Division I-high 3-point percentage to 40.3 by canning 9 of 21 shots from deep (42.9 percent) and finished the night at 56.7 percent from the field (34 of 60).
