“We Were That Close”: An Oral History of the 2008 UAB/Memphis Game
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Everyone who wedged their way into Bartow Arena on Feb. 16, 2008 has their own story to tell.
Stories about one of the most memorable nights in Bartow Arena history. Stories of an orange jumpsuit and a slap heard around the arena. Stories of big shots and near misses. Stories of the awkward moment of rushing the floor to celebrate a shot that came too late to count. Stories of childhood friends playing against each other in a rivalry that they hadn’t yet come to understand.
Stories of the victory of a lifetime turning into a nagging loss that never fully went away.
Stories of Memphis 79, UAB 78.
“We were that close to doing something epic,” said Donnie Marsh, who was an assistant coach during Mike Davis’ entire tenure at UAB.
Memphis was the country’s top ranked team. The Tigers were 24-0, at the time, and only two of those games finished with a margin of six points or less. Were they unbeatable? It sure seemed that way.
John Calipari’s team featured sure-fire NBA talent and NBA hopefuls. Derrick Rose, the Chicago native who was making a nine-month stopover in Memphis, was the No. 1 choice later that year. Chris Douglas-Roberts and Joey Dorsey were second round picks that year and Robert Dozier was chosen in the second round in 2009. Antonio Anderson, Robert Dozier and Shawn Taggart were all considered NBA possibilities.
“What I was wrapping my brain around was they were No. 1 in the country,” said Aaron Johnson, who was a UAB freshman at the time and preparing to play against childhood friend Derrick Rose. “Like, the No. 1 team in the country, in the entire Division I, is coming to play at Bartow. That was the thing I was really trying to wrap my head around and get prepared for.”
Three days before the game, UAB was in Houston to play Rice in a Conference USA game at a rodeo arena. The Owls’ home floor – Tudor Fieldhouse – was under renovation, so the teams met at Reliant Arena. The arena had a not-so-faint smell of horse and cow manure and the official attendance was listed at an inflated 119. One end of the court was open and the doors were about 50 feet away. An errant pass meant someone had to go get the basketball before play could resume. The Blazers, playing without leading scorer Robert Vaden, who sat out to rest an injured groin, were led by senior point guard Ed Berrios and Channing Toney in a 69-60 victory.
They returned to Birmingham to witness a totally different setting.
“I’ll never forget that,” Johnson said. “I remember seeing the (ticket) line almost past University. I was like, ‘Is this for real?’ That was my first, like, this is college for real moment. The atmosphere around the students. Walking to class and everybody is like, ‘Man, we got to beat Memphis. Y’all got to do it.’ The student engagement, that was really like my college moment.”
Students camped out outside Bartow Arena for two days. Ticket lines remained long, until there was none left to buy. This one just hit different.
“For sure,” said Sam Miller, who was UAB’s Associate Athletic Director for External Affairs from 2004-11. “It was late (in conference play). We’ve had a lot of good teams come play at Bartow Arena. In my opinion, that’s the best one. They had such a sensation. They were undefeated. They just felt like a juggernaut. In 2006 (when UAB knocked off Memphis at Bartow Arena), they were a great team but we were great too. In 2008, it felt like this was one of the better college basketball teams of all time, not just of that season. There was incredible energy for that game.”
Joe Webb, the quarterback on the UAB football team, spent a week rallying his teammates. In a way, Webb said, it wasn’t necessary.
“Everybody was together, there wasn’t no separation,” Webb said. “There was no football vs. basketball, we were all together. We all stayed in the same dorm, for the most part. All of us stayed in Blount Hall, so we would see the basketball team. They’d come to our games. We’d see them in the stands. That’s when we were at Legion Field, they would come up to the fence. We were very close back then. I know it’s different now. Back then, football, basketball, baseball, all of us were very close.”
All of that was important, of course, but in the days leading up to the game, Davis and the UAB coaching staff worried solely on honing up the game plan. Marsh, who was basically the head coach of the defense, laughed when asked if the preparation felt like there were six holes in a dam and he only had five fingers to plug them.
“You knew they had some options and some weapons but we had some too,” Marsh said. “Vaden never shied away from a fight. He had games where he might not (make shots) – I think he went through that stretch where he went 0 for 19 a year later – but when it was his turn to fight, kind of glove up, that’s one of the things I think I was proud about. Our guys said ‘We ain’t backing down from this. We know what their record is but they’re in our place, we got the great environment, we feel good about who we have, let’s go attack these guys.’”
When game day finally arrived, Miller said one of his favorite memories came when they opened the Bartow Arena doors.
“A big memory of that day for me was that Joe Webb, who was our starting quarterback on the football team, was the first student in the door,” Miller said. “We had kids camp out. We had a huge line of people waiting to get in. Joe beelined in, shirtless, painted green and had incredible energy the entire game. He led the student section that entire day. That game was an incredible atmosphere. It was great, actually, to see how much a part that Joe and the football team were a part of the student section energy that day.”
The crowd grew and the energy surged with each tick of the Bartow Arena scoreboard clock as it counted down to tip. Both teams went into the locker room for one final time before coming back out to finish warmups. UAB slipped on their gold uniforms before coming back out.
“I will never forget the energy of us finally running out (after) switching our uniforms to the gold ones and the crowd just heats up,” Johnson said. “I will never forget that. That is 100 percent the best feeling I’ve ever had as a basketball player – 100 percent.”
Nearby, Marsh was also soaking in the Bartow Arena atmosphere.
“I made it a point my entire career to always take a second to do that,” Marsh said. “At the end of the day, you won’t remember scores or records or some of the other stuff. But, the atmosphere and the environment, what you feel when you’re in that, I think you always have to take some time to absorb that. If you don’t you’re kind of missing a big part of what college basketball is all about. You have to appreciate those types of environments. We’re at a level where you don’t get them all the time. When you get them, you got to fully appreciate them and that was one of them.”
Once the ball was tipped, in front of a Bartow Arena record crowd of 9, 392 fans, the teams traded points for more than eight minutes of clock time. With just under 12 minutes left, Lawrence Kinnard and Vaden hit 3-pointers on back-to-back possessions to start a 15-2 run. When Frank Holmes concluded the scoring spurt with a three-point play, UAB had a 27-16 lead.
Memphis did what great teams do. The Tigers regrouped and erased the lead. A three-point play by Douglas-Roberts gave Memphis a 41-40 lead with 35 seconds left before halftime. However, UAB ended the half with a 3-pointer from just in front of the Memphis bench to give the Blazers a two-point lead at intermission.
Rose was scoreless at halftime with misses on all five of his field goal attempts.
“We threw some different things together, man, that we hadn’t necessarily done before,” Marsh said. “It was big time because we confused Derrick Rose. He was like 2 for 12 or 2 for 13 or something and turned the ball over three or four times. I felt like if you can do that to somebody like that, then you give yourself a chance. They needed somebody else to step up and my God they got Anderson and Chris Douglas-Roberts. Man, those guys stepped up big time.”
Memphis led by six points at one point in the second half. But, the feeling in the building was UAB controlled the final half. Mike Davis Jr. hit a pair of free throws with 4:35 left to build the lead to 75-70. Memphis was in a stretch when the Tigers missed nine consecutive shots from the field and had empty possession after empty possession. With 2:32 remaining, Kinnard hit a pair of free throws to pad the lead to seven points.
There was a party going on in Bartow Arena.
In the midst of all that, though, one of the biggest whistles of the game occurred. Johnson, who had hounded his fellow Chicago native and old friend Derrick Rose in an atypical night, fouled out with 3:33 left on the clock. Davis waited for him on the sideline.
“Coach Davis was hollering at me, ‘Why did you foul out? Why would you go for that?’” Johnson said. “I was like ‘I didn’t touch him Coach.’”
Touch him or not, Johnson was sidelined for the rest of the night.
But UAB remained in control.
“The one thing I do remember is looking up at the clock and it was a minute and 32 seconds left and we were up (seven),” Johnson said. “Up (seven) with 1:32 left and a 35 second shot clock. I was like, Man, this is great, we’re about to beat the No. 1 team. We just got to run the shot clock, that’s all we got to do.”
Webb was not only thinking the same thing but he was getting the students ready to charge the floor. At the same point, Miller was standing alongside UAB athletic director Brian Mackin in a portal on the opposite end from the UAB student section.
“When you know it’s a possibility, everybody starts buzzing over the radios to have the security plan in place,” Miller said. “I think, in this particular instance, that may have worked out to be a negative. We were up seven with a minute and a half left. I remember seeing the security team coming down from the concourse and thinking ‘That’s a big visible sign, maybe a little bit too soon against a team like this.’ I just remember as they came down thinking let’s not jinx anything yet. But you got to get security ready, you got to get your plan in place.”
As it turned out, 1:32 was just enough time for Memphis to create a miracle. Anderson and Douglas-Roberts sandwiched 3-pointers around an empty UAB possession to quickly trim the deficit.
Johnson was anguished because he could do nothing to help.
“It just turned so fast,” Johnson said. “I was on the bench, just yelling and screaming, ‘Why would they foul me out?’ You just go through all those moments of shoulda, coulda, woulda. For me, it was painful, man. I really felt like I had outplayed the No. 1 pick in the draft for one night. I genuinely did.”
Vaden went to the free throw line with 15 seconds left and the Blazers leading by one. Make both and probably the worst thing that happens is the game goes into overtime. He made one of two. Memphis hustled down the court and got the ball to Douglas-Roberts on the right wing. He circled past the top of the key, got to the left wing and sliced to the basket. He used a spin move to get a little separation and scored a bucket while being contested by Vaden. The whistle sounded while he was shooting.
“I felt he traveled,” Vaden said in the postgame press conference. “I got off-balance, but I didn’t think I touched him.”
His opinion didn’t count. The foul was called and Douglas-Roberts free throw gave Memphis the 79-78 lead with 6.5 seconds left.
Somehow, some way, Memphis had the lead.
UAB inbounded the ball to Vaden who quickly dribbled up the sideline while escorted by two Memphis defenders. There was contact on the dribble at midcourt by one defender and contact by the other defender just before Vaden threw up an off-balance shot from about 10 feet inside the halfcourt line. The shot missed badly but Howard Crawford was able to tip the ball toward Kinnard, who was about six feet from the basket. Kinnard picked up the loose ball and hit the shot.
Kinnard said after the game that he saw the red light on the backboard, indicating time had run out. But, in that moment many in Bartow Arena thought – or at least hoped – the shot beat the clock.
One of those people was Joe Webb.
“Immediately, I looked down at the court and there is our quarterback almost at the free throw line by that point,” said Miller, who had knee surgery just a few weeks prior to the game. “I was just barely off crutches at that point and wind up taking off in a sprint out on the court to try and corral our 6-foot-5 inch giant quarterback, to keep him away from (6-foot-9, 275-pound) Joey Dorsey.”
A few hours later, once arriving home, Miller turned on the television.
“I found myself a 5-foot-9 inch guy limping down the court to jump in the middle of Joe and Joey Dorsey,” Miller said. “I remember seeing myself on SportsCenter that night and just shaking my head. Again, positions you don’t ever anticipate finding yourself in.”
For Webb, he thought he was in the middle of what he calls “a dream come true.”
As a true freshman in 2006, Webb was in Bartow Arena when Squeaky Johnson and the Blazers beat Memphis. He rushed the court with his football teammates that night but really just followed the lead of star quarterback Darrell Hackney. This time, Webb was the first one on the court. This time, he said, he was a leader.
“It was just a surreal moment,” Webb said. “There was just so much intensity throughout the whole game. Even rushing the floor when we lost, it was a great feeling because we were all together. Everybody was together.”
Just before the group of students reached midcourt, they were stopped by the Memphis players.
“I was looking Dorsey right in his face,” said Webb, who went on to an 11-year NFL career and last spring had his first professional boxing match. “We were basically squaring up. They were shocked. They were like, ‘Why y’all rushing the floor? We won.’ We were thinking we won, so it was kind of an awkward moment. It was like, ‘Did we win or did y’all win?’”
Actually, that question hadn’t been answered yet, at least officially. The officials were at the scorers’ table watching a replay of Kinnard’s shot. At the time, though, the biggest concern was clearing the court and getting the Memphis players into the locker room.
Security ushered Memphis ushered the Memphis players into the portal by the Tigers bench, which was bordered on one side by the final part of the student section. Insults weren’t the only thing thrown. Some of it came out of the stands, some of it came from at least two Memphis players who dug into a trash can and threw something into the stands. In the midst of the chaos, Memphis’ Pierre Niles, a 6-foot-8, 300-pound reserve, who didn’t play in the game, reached into the front row of the stands and slapped a screaming UAB student on the left cheek. Miller, who was still trying to get the floor cleared, said he saw an “orange flash” in his peripheral vision when the student, who was wearing an orange jumpsuit, jumped out of the stands.
“All of it is so fast,” Miller said. “As we sit here and retell it, everybody’s stories probably feel like it was an hour long melee. It wasn’t. The UAB police and the security did as good of a job as they could. Everybody understood, get the Memphis players off the court. Get Memphis folks to the locker room and let everybody cool off.”
That happened about the same time that officials ruled that Kinnard’s shot did not beat the buzzer. A stunned group of UAB players turned and quietly walked to the locker room.
The postgame business still had to go on as planned, which meant Calipari was ushered to the media interview room across the floor from the Memphis locker room. Entrance to the interview room was just before the door to the Green and Gold room, where a disappointed group of Blazer fans had congregated. Calipari was mistakenly taken into the Green and Gold room.
“My radio starts screaming, ‘Sam, we need you in the Green and Gold room,’” Miller said. “By the time I got to there, Coach Calipari was encircled by some members of the Greenhouse Gang, who had made a full day at the basketball game. I’m willing to say I don’t think anybody intended for UAB’s fans to have that close of access to Calipari. But, he was getting it back as good as he was getting it. I actually grabbed him and we pulled him out of the Green and Gold room. We got him out, away from everybody and onto the court. I expected to get yelled at by Cal and the folks that were with him. As soon as he got out on the court, he turned around with a huge smile on his face. He started laughing and said, ‘Did you hear what those guys said to me?’”
“Since then, I’ve done a few projects with Cal. Always when I’ve been around him, I retell the story and laugh. I think the retellings in the days and weeks after that game kind of got exaggerated. But, in that day and that moment, I thought he was a pretty good sport about what happened.”
Not far away, the Blazers were gathered in the locker room, trying to wrap their heads around what just happened.
“Just a lot of tears,” Marsh said. “At the end of the day, that’s kind of what you want. I don’t think anybody in that locker room had any more to give. That’s what you want. You go into the locker room, you should see that and feel that. I know, personally, I was drained. It was like I played 40 minutes.”
At some point, Johnson made his way back into the arena to see an old friend. Joyce Jones was a counselor at Hubbard High, where Johnson graduated. Rose attended Simeon Career Academy but his older brother attended Hubbard High and Derrick spent time at the school playing basketball. Jones, who was close to both Rose and Johnnson, made the trip from Chicago to see them play against each other.
Jones said she wanted to visit with Rose. Johnson said that probably couldn’t happen. Jones didn’t take no for an answer. So, they headed up a Bartow Arena hallway and made their way outside to the Memphis bus. They zig-zagged through the Memphis bus, which was already filled with players. Jones walked on the bus and asked Rose to come out and talk.
“I’m talking about, she walked right on it and she had on UAB gear and everything,” Johnson said. “He ended up coming off the bus and me and him talked right there. We didn’t really talk about the game. It was kind of like two Chicago guys just happy to see (each other) kind of being successful. He said he was just happy to see another Chicago person. I told him life was crazy for him and he said he loved the South. Then we both started talking about being in the South. We had so many things that were relatable.”
Not long after, the Memphis bus pulled away from Bartow Arena and the UAB players began looking for a way to move forward.
“A lot of teams don’t come back from games like that,” Marsh said. “They can’t get away from it. They live in that game and that game beats you the next two games. You always have to be cognizant of that. You can’t let one game beat you two games down the road.”
That didn’t happen to UAB, partly because of the way that Davis and his staff handled the situation. Four days later, UAB played another Bartow Arena classic, beating Houston 101-99 in a game that probably deserves a story of its own. The Blazers went on to win four more in succession before getting whipped at Memphis in the regular season finale.
When telling the story of the 2007-08 season, though, it’s hard not to start and finish on that crazy night in Bartow Arena.
“I always felt like Bartow Arena was a little bit of a secret weapon,” Miller said. “When that building is full, it’s as good of an atmosphere of anywhere I’ve ever been in. We always thought when the building was full, it was a great opportunity to catch a team like that by surprise. Which is why UAB had always done so well in home games when highly ranked teams come in. That Memphis game is certainly no exception. Still to this day, I wish it had been one point different.”
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