In his first collegiate game, Derrick Rose scored 17 points, grabbed six rebounds and dished out five assists. In his most recent contest, he poured in a season-high 26 points including five three pointers. In leading his team to a 9-0 start, the top-ranked point guard in his recruiting class has been as good as advertised, using his sturdy but quick 6-foot-3, 205 pound frame to immediately establish himself as one of the nation’s best lead guards, freshman or not. Joining Rose in the Memphis backcourt is junior Chris Douglas-Roberts, who leads the team in scoring. Standing 6-foot-7, Douglas-Roberts is a walking mismatch. Throw in 6-foot-6 junior Antonio Anderson to the Tigers’ three-guard lineup, and Memphis boasts a backcourt as big as some frontcourts. Charged with defending the Tigers’ big guards on Saturday, Georgetown’s defensive stoppers, Jessie Sapp and Jeremiah Rivers, as well as the anchor of its backcourt, Jonathan Wallace, will face a test not quite like anything they’ve seen this year or last. “They are [big],” Sapp said. “But we never back down from anybody. We play against DaJuan Summers in practice. We play against Pat Ewing in practice. They’re big too. We’ll be fine I think.” ost teams this season have played a zone against the Tigers, either a 2-3 or a triangle-and-two look. Connecticut attempted to play man, and found themselves down 20-5 before they knew it. John Thompson III would not tip his hand Wednesday as to which he’d elect to employ, though Memphis Head Coach John Calipari said Thursday he expects the Hoyas to play a 2-3. Still, Sapp, Rivers, and Wallace will bear much of the burden that comes with defending the Memphis backcourt. While Calipari may insist that the Tigers run the “Princeton Offense on steroids,” Memphis’ orients itself more around the dribble-drive. And no one dribbles and drives quite like Rose, who has the unique combination of speed, size, and a smooth outside stroke. He’s taken over games, like the Tigers’ win over Cincinnati, with his outside shooting, but he’s also gone over 20 points – against UConn on Nov. 16 – without hitting a three. Against Austin Peay, in a 22-point Memphis win, he had the dish and drive working, registering 19 points (without attempting a three) and 12 dimes. Rose has been prone to the freshman blunder, tallying 30 turnovers against his 37 assists, and his team has only six more assists (147) than turnovers (141) on the year. “I mean yeah it’s a challenge, but I’ve been going up against players my whole life,” Rivers said. “For me it’s just going up against another good player so I’m not like, `Oh, I’ve got D. Rose Saturday.’ It’s not something I’m really thinking about.” Rivers recalled playing Rose once in AAU basketball, with Rivers’ team winning but Rose hitting several long threes. “I’ve seen some of his highlights, but everybody looks like Michael Jordan in their highlights,” senior forward Patrick Ewing Jr. said of Rose. “But from what I’ve heard he’s really good, he’s really, really good. We’re just looking forward to the challenge.” For Sapp, Saturday’s matchup is nothing new. He’s heard all about the supposed-inferiority of the Georgetown guards. He relishes the talk. “We’ve gone through this before with [North Carolina’s] Tywon Lawson, Wayne Ellington, last year. Everybody questions us,” Sapp said. “We’re just gonna do what we do: Play defense and hopefully stop those guys from scoring as much.” It’s hard to quantitatively measure the impact that the Hoyas’ guards have on defense, considering both the quality of the Hoyas’ opponents so far this season and the different schemes that the team has employed. Sapp and Rivers each have seven steals in eight games, tied for second on the team. Opposing teams have managed to shoot just 34.5 percent against the Hoyas this season, with opposing guards mustering only a 30 percent clip (66-for-220). Holding Memphis to such an abysmal percentage would be a major coup. Douglas-Roberts has been extremely efficient on the offensive end this season, shooting 53.2 percent from the field, including 45.5 percent from deep. Rose has shot nearly as well, posting 48.9 percent overall and 37.5 from three. Anderson, though, shoots just 36.2 percent. Backup guards Doneal Mack and Willie Kemp lead Memphis in three-point attempts, but have connected on just 34.7 and 43.2 of those, respectively “I like being the underdog,” Sapp said. “I like when people question `can the guards of Georgetown do this or do that.'” Notes: – When asked Wednesday about the prospects of playing against a man-to-man defense, Wallace’s eyes lit up. The Hoyas, who thrive against aggressive man defense, have seen hardly any of it this season. The zones the Hoyas have seen have been fairly effective at taking away backdoor cuts, which use a defender’s aggressiveness against him. Memphis, however, plays almost exclusively man-to-man. “Yeah I mean that’s what we kind of thrive off of, teams that play consistent man-to-man defense and real hard man-to-man defense,” Wallace said. “We’re looking [at] that [as] what they’re going to do heading into this game so hopefully that should play into our hands and we should be prepared and ready to face it.” – While Memphis and Georgetown have not faced one another since the 1999-00 season, many of the players are familiar with each other. Georgetown big man Roy Hibbert and Memphis bruiser Joey Dorsey traveling together to last summer’s Pan-Am games in Brazil. “I talk to him all the time. He’s a funny guy,” Hibbert said. “I have to make sure to keep him off the boards. He is extremely good at getting offensive rebounds and getting second shots. So I have to be aware of him. They like to throw over the top for a lob so it’s going to be a different look than the other teams we’ve played.” DaJuan Summers also knows Dorsey from their days growing up in Baltimore. Rivers played against Rose in AAU basketball, as did freshman guards Austin Freeman and Chris Wright. – Memphis enters tomorrow’s contest with a 36-game home winning streak on the line, the second longest in the nation. Tomorrow’s matchup is the first between two top-five teams ever to be played at Memphis. -Much was made at Wednesday’s press conference of the Hoyas’ new-found penchant for pushing the ball. “We’re getting up and down the floor more. We’re a different team,” Ewing said. “That’s the thing about college basketball. No two years most likely are you going to be the same. I guess that’s kind of the beauty of college basketball. You get new players, players leave so you know with our talent now we get up and down the floor now.” Last weekend’s win against Radford was the first time Georgetown had scored 100 points under Thompson. emphis, on the other hand, with its many superb athletes, loves to run. According to Thompson though, the pace at which tomorrow’s game is played isn’t so important. “I think pace is irrelevant. We can go at whatever pace. I think its moreso about getting quality shots regardless of when you get it, whether its 3 seconds into the shot clock or 30 seconds into the shotclock,” Thompson said. “That is our point of emphasis this year, just making sure that we are getting quality shots, I don’t care how fast it is or how slow it is. I think we have the personnel and the understanding to be able to play a lot of different ways, well. We’re not there yet but we’re slowly getting there.”