Tigers Fall in Tournament Championship

Sunday, March 13

Orlando, Fla.

2:15 pm CT

University of Memphis

19-15

UConn

24-10

Memphis

Connecticut

Photo by: Ben Solomon

Mar 13, 2016 | Men's Basketball

Box Score

Dedric Lawson recorded 17th double-double of the season

ORLANDO - The Memphis Tigers battled for 40 minutes in the championship game of the 2016 American Athletic Conference Tournament, but could not recover from a big first-half run from the UConn Huskies, falling 72-58.

Dedric Lawson - who was named to the AAC All-Tournament Team - had a 21-point, 11-rebound double-double. That was his 17th double-double of the season, which tied Keith Lee for the most in a single season by a true freshman in program history. Ricky Tarrant Jr. scored 11 points, while Markel Crawford added nine and Trahson Burrell seven.

Burrell led the team with four assists, while he, Tarrant Jr., and Sam Craft had a steal in the losing effort.

The game went back-and-forth for the first four minutes, with the Tigers leading 4-3; however, a 15-2 UConn run put the Huskies ahead by double-digits, and the Tigers went into halftime trailing by 13 at 32-19.

Memphis came out firing in the second half, using a 12-5 run to climb to within six, and trailed by four with 11:43 to play after a Jeremiah Martin lay-in taking the score to 40-36.

UConn answered with its second 15-2 run of the game to push ahead by 17 points.

The Tigers would not give up, and clawed their way back using a 9-0 run to cut the gap to single-digits with 3:07 to play; however, UConn countered with its own 9-0 run, closing the game on a 10-4 run and giving the game its 72-58 final score.

UConn had five players reach double-figure scoring, led by Shonn Miller and Sterling Gibbs who scored 13 points apiece.