FanHouse WesleyWitherspoon

Whether it is the championship game of the NCAA Tournament or the championship game of the Puerto Rico Tip-Off tournament, you need to be able to hit your free throws.

Memphis' bad free throw shooting kept the door open for a magical Kansas comeback last April. Last night against Xavier, the Tigers missed 7 of 9 free throws late that cost them the game.

The Musketeers hit their free throws to salt away a 63-58 win over Memphis for the Tip-Off title.

Remember that last year, Memphis head coach John Calipari shrugged off the media's insistence that their bad free throw shooting would cost them. So I find it amazing that in the time since their overtime loss to Kansas and now they haven't gotten any better from the stripe.

Memphis went 15-of-30 from the line in this game and are shooting 67% for the season.

This week, FanHouse is taking an early look at the top teams heading into 2008 with a BlogPoll decided on by our college hoops bloggers. To help with the team capsules, we've brought in some of the top fan bloggers around the internets to give us insights on their teams.

Today, we have enlisted Chris Vernon of Fox Sports Radio 730 AM in Memphis and Verno's Blog to break down the Memphis Tigers.

The way the season ended for the Memphis Tigers last year was totally devastating. Memphis ended the season 38-2 and many in Memphis still have a hard time thinking about the 38 wins. Rarely has there been such an amazing season that brought upon such intense disappointment.

Now that Derrick Rose, Chris Douglas Roberts, and Joey Dorsey have NBA contracts and Memphis looks to who will replace much of what made the team such a success in the previous few seasons. While Rose was only in Memphis for one year, CDR and Dorsey were key components of a team that went to the Elite 8 twice, and the Final Four (and championship game) once. With Dorsey in the middle, and Douglas Roberts on the wing, Memphis went 104-10 over the last three seasons.