A player when the time came

Good story about Robert Sallie and his teammates persuaded coach Calipari, that Sallie would be a player when the time came. Those players, particularly the veterans Robert Dozier and Antonio Anderson, had told Calipari he could trust Sallie.
It seemed hard to trust a player who had moved around from school to school, and had even signed letters of intent with Washington and Nebraska before coming to Memphis.
Sallie rewarded his teammates faith here Thursday with an improbable 35 pts performance that rescued Memphis from N.C.A.A. tournament disaster.
He hit 10 of 15 3-pointers as the Tigers, survived with Cal State Northridge, 81-70.
Sallie’s 10 baskets from beyond the arc set a record for 3-pointers made in an N.C.A.A. tournament first-round game.
He averaged 4.5 points a game this season.

“I knew he had it in him all along,” Anderson said. “Just a point of him being real aggressive and shooting the ball when he’s open.” “They kept leaving me open,” Sallie said. “I got a lot of open looks today and I just hit the shots.”
“I wasn’t playing a lot in the beginning and I just made the decision, you can’t run, you just can’t give up because things are not going your way,” Sallie said.
“Four weeks ago is when I started coming hard every single day, getting in early, and trying to take extra shots.”

Sallie was not a favorite player of Calipari’s early in the season and they had such serious disagreements that Calipari said Sallie should leave if he could not conform.


Calipari said: “Our motto, ‘Every player, every possession,’ he wasn’t used to that. He was more like, you know, a rec league. I’ll play when I feel like it. It took him time to figure it out.”



Sallie’s shooting saved Memphis from a number of problems Thursday. The Tigers got into foul trouble in the first half and had three starters sitting.The Cal State zone closed down the middle to the Tigers and forced the ball to the wings.
What irritated Calipari more was his team’s attitude, which he said was arrogant.

“My job is to have the swagger role, but I’ve got to be on top of the arrogance,” he said, adding, “The swagger for us went to a little bit of arrogance.”