Wow! 17 pages and counting. Here's my recap:
As I said during the chat, playing underwhelming competition leading up to this game is probably the primary reason they lost. They simply weren't prepared to play against the team as athletic, physical and skilled as Memphis.
Hurley is a great coach, but drawing that technical in that situation still shows a certain level of immaturity that he needs to grow out of. Who knows what the outcome would have been if he showed restraint? It did look like McNeeley bullied through the smaller rebounder before grabbing the rebound over him, but in many cases that level of physicality is not called. I wish the refs would have swallowed the whistle on many of the physical body contact throughout the game.
The officiating was pretty bad and tilted somewhat in Memphis's favor, but good teams know how to overcome that. This team will learn. UConn got into early and late foul trouble due to some questionable calls, but there were a lot where they just couldn't defend drives into the paint without fouling.
Mahaney was clearly a defensive liability out there. He also continues to process too slowly in the half court motion offense and needs to learn to be more decisive. With that said, his teammates were not exactly executing the half court sharply as they needed, to presenting good opportunities to receive the ball. Diarra was impacted by the same issue. Placing a lot of blame on those two guards in my opinion is a little harsh. Though if Hurley had a big physical guard who could handle the ball, that would have played well against an aggressive team like Memphis. They will need to figure this out or other teams will try to disrupt our half court offense by being aggressive on the ball.
I'm not surprised by the outcome. It reminded me of our first Big East game last year where they simply weren't prepared for it. And that season turned out pretty good. There are definitely a few weaknesses that they need to learn to overcome, but they certainly have a lot of talent where they can make up for it.