No. 18 Memphis bids for bounce-back effort in game vs. Charlotte

No. 18 Memphis wants to get back on track, and fixing defensive snags is bound to be one way to do it.The Tigers will play Sunday afternoon at last-place Charlotte in an American Athletic Conference game after falling 88-81 at Temple on Thursday. Memphis gave up 52 second-half points, and the outcome snapped the team’s four-game winning streak.”No worry yet. I think the players will bounce back from this,” Memphis coach Penny Hardaway said. “… I’m not going to panic.”Memphis (13-4, 3-1) became the last team in the AAC to suffer a conference defeat this season.”We’re still in control of our own destiny,” Hardaway said.Charlotte (7-11, 0-5), which is mired in a six-game losing streak, is the only team without an AAC victory this season. The latest setback came Tuesday, 68-59 at Wichita State.”You got to have the discipline and toughness to make the right plays over a 40-minute period of time,” Charlotte coach Aaron Fearne said.So that makes the task against Memphis perhaps more daunting for the 49ers.”Right now, (the Tigers) are up there as the best there is, and they’ve beaten some really good teams,” Fearne said. “We’re going to have to be phenomenal. We’re going to have to, obviously, have fantastic support from our fan base, and community, and help us get through the patch.”Memphis guard PJ Haggerty is the AAC’s leading scorer at an average of 22.3 points per game.With the unbeaten mark in league play off the board, it’s time for the Tigers to refocus. In the Temple game, it was the most points allowed by Memphis since November.”When our offense wasn’t working, we weren’t caring about the other end,” Hardaway said.

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