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Three Thoughts on Tiger Football

CREDIT: Tyler Kaufman

• Jackie Smith was a Hall of Fame tight end with the St. Louis Cardinals. Over 16 NFL seasons, he caught 480 passes and was named All-Pro five times. But it was a pass Smith dropped at the end of his one season with the Dallas Cowboys — in the end zone, late in Super Bowl XIII — that sportswriters tend to bring up four decades later. It’s unfair, but such is the weight of playmakers in the sport of football.
Tyler Kaufman

Calvin Austin in full flight.


Junior receiver Calvin Austin III is the most dangerous weapon currently deployed by the Memphis Tigers. The speed demon from Harding Academy is 49 yards from 1,000 for the season (he’s averaged more than 100 per game). He leads the Tigers with nine touchdowns, his latest coming on a 59-yard pass from Brady White in the first quarter of last Saturday’s game at Tulane. But alas, Austin dropped a pair of passes that would have been touchdowns, deflating drives that, had they produced 14 more points, would have changed a game the Tigers lost by precisely that total. Memphis wouldn’t be 6-3 without Austin, but they might be 7-2 had his hands been a little stickier in New Orleans. It’s an unfair assessment. Individuals don’t lose games; teams lose games. But such is the weight of playmakers in the sport of football. Look for Austin to take a star turn this Saturday against Houston.

• The recent revolution in Tiger football was led by coaches Justin Fuente and Mike Norvell. Each departed after four seasons for the greener pastures of the Atlantic Coast Conference. How are things at Virginia Tech and Florida State? The Hokies are 4-6, not the kind of mark envisioned for year five of the Fuente era, particularly after Virginia Tech went 10-4 and played for the ACC championship upon the coach’s arrival in 2016. (The Hokies are 37-26 since Fuente took over.)

As for Florida State, it’s uglier. The Seminoles are 2-6 and will suffer a third straight losing season (their first under Norvell’s watch). The program is essentially the inverse of Memphis, once so mighty a 10-win season was the starting point for discussions of championship dreams. Now Florida State is staring up at North Carolina State and Wake Forest in its division of the ACC. Deep breaths, Coach Norvell.

Fuente and Norvell will forever be heroes in these parts. And they’re in a different tax bracket, having taken jobs at “Power Five” schools with much larger recruiting tools with which to play. But I wonder if either has been as happy as we saw them when they each raised a trophy at the Liberty Bowl to celebrate an American Athletic Conference title. Sports are funny that way. Happiness and success don’t necessarily go hand in hand.

• Since joining the AAC in 2013, the Tigers have only had one defensive back earn first-team all-conference honors (Bobby McCain in 2014). Look for Quindell Johnson to make it two this season. The sophomore safety intercepted a pass and forced a fumble for the second straight game at Tulane. He leads the Tigers with 50 solo tackles (fourth in the AAC and 12 more than any of his teammates). He’s a game-changer, the kind of player on the defensive side of the ball who elevates the heart rate of opponents and captures the eye of NFL scouts. Just ask McCain, currently starting at safety in his sixth season with the Miami Dolphins.

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Tulane 35, Tigers 21

CREDIT: Tyler Kaufman

The Tigers’ three-game winning streak came to an end Saturday afternoon at Yulman Stadium in New Orleans. Tulane scored early and put up touchdowns in each quarter, never trailing, to improve to 6-5 on the season and 3-5 in the American Athletic Conference. The Tigers fell to 6-3 (4-3) and have now lost two straight at Tulane.
Tyler Kaufman

After falling behind by a touchdown, the Tigers tied the score at 7-7 when Brady White connected with Calvin Austin III for a 59-yard score just five minutes into the game. (Austin later dropped a pair of would-be touchdown passes.) The Green Wave regained the lead when quarterback Michael Pratt found Jha’Quan Jackson for a 42-yard touchdown late in the first quarter. Memphis played from behind the remainder of the contest.

The Tigers played without two of their top defensive linemen, as O’Bryan Goodson didn’t suit up and Joseph Dorceus was sidelined early after a blow to the head.

White’s second touchdown pass of the game — a six-yarder to tight end Sean Dykes — brought Memphis within seven points (28-21) with 5:13 to play in the third quarter. On Tulane’s ensuing drive, Tiger safety Quindell Johnson intercepted his second pass in as many weeks. (Johnson also forced a fumble for the second straight game.) But the Tiger offense couldn’t finish drives, Austin’s two drops proving especially painful. Cameron Carroll’s nine-yard touchdown scamper put Tulane up by 14 points with 11:34 left on the clock and proved to be the clincher.

White completed 19 of 39 passes for 248 yards, becoming only the second Memphis quarterback to top 10,000 yards for his career. (He needs 56 yards to surpass Danny Wimprine’s program record.) White threw a pair of interceptions in addition to his two touchdown tosses. Austin caught five of his passes for 110 yards.

An ongoing problem for the Tigers — their running game — resurfaced, Memphis gaining only 45 yards on 28 carries. Tulane ran the ball for 165 yards and Pratt passed for 254 more.

The Tigers will complete the strangest regular season in memory next Saturday when Houston (3-3) visits the Liberty Bowl. For the first time in four years, Memphis will not have an appearance in the AAC championship game to extend the season. A bowl berth likely awaits, perhaps the Birmingham Bowl, where Memphis last played in 2015.

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Tigers 85, Central Arkansas 68

The Tigers have their first winning streak of the season. Utilizing a 14-0 run to erase a two-point (42-40) halftime deficit, Memphis improved to 3-2 with a win over Central Arkansas Friday night at FedExForum. For the second game in a row — both home wins for the Tigers — Landers Nolley came off the bench to lead his team in scoring, this time with 23 points. The sophomore transfer from Virginia Tech has topped 20 points in three of the Tigers’ five games.

Landers Nolley

The Tigers played a sloppy first half, committing 12 fouls and 13 turnovers, enough to keep the Bears in contention in the visitors’ first game of the season. But a combination of frenetic defense and efficient offense over the first 10 minutes of the second half put the Tigers comfortably ahead in the first meeting between these programs since early in the 2009-10 season.

“This game was a lot tougher than we wanted, but it’s the type of game you can use film from to show the good and the bad to the guys and grow from it,” said Tiger coach Penny Hardaway. “Every game isn’t going to be perfect or pretty. I’ll take the win for sure.”

Three Memphis starters hit double figures in the scoring column: D.J. Jeffries (15 despite fouling out), Lester Quinones (14), and Boogie Ellis (10). As a team, the Tigers shot well from the field (42 percent) and foul line (80 percent). They forced 30 Bear turnovers.

Rylan Bergersen hit four three-pointers and led UCA with 22 points.

The Tigers will play their third straight home game next Tuesday when Mississippi Valley State visits FedExForum. They only have two nonconference games remaining before American Athletic Conference play gets underway with a trip to Tulane on December 16th.

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Tigers 83, Arkansas State 54

CREDIT: Joe Murphy

The Tigers made easy work of the Arkansas State Red Wolves Wednesday night in their latest home opener in 28 years. Playing in a virtually empty FedExForum — coronavirus restrictions firmly in place — the Tigers utilized an early 14-0 run to take control of the teams’ first meeting in ten years. Sophomore transfer Landers Nolley came off the bench for the first time this season and led Memphis with 23 points. He hit three of the Tigers’ six three-pointers to help the U of M improve to 2-2 for the season. Arkansas State falls to 0-3 with the loss.
Joe Murphy

Landers Nolley

The last time the Tigers opened their home schedule in December was in 1992, Penny Hardaway’s junior (and final college) season as a Tiger player.

Memphis held the Red Wolves to 33 percent shooting from the field and managed an efficient offense, compiling 21 assists and only 12 turnovers. The Tigers hit 77 percent of their shots from the foul line (17 for 22). The Tigers were up by 13 points just eight minutes into the game and led by 22 (48-26) at halftime.

Joining Nolley in double figures in the scoring column for the Tigers were Lester Quinones (15 points and 10 rebounds) and freshman center Moussa Cisse (14 points, along with 10 rebounds).

The Tigers are right back at it Friday night, when Central Arkansas visits FedExForum.

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Three Thoughts on Tiger Football

CREDIT: Carolyn Andros

• The Memphis defense can win a game. You have to go back a quarter-century — October 28, 1995 — to find a game the Tigers won without scoring more than 10 points as they did last Saturday at Navy. In Rip Scherer’s first season as coach at the U of M, the Tigers edged Tulsa, 10-7, at the Liberty Bowl. The win improved that team to only 3-5, though, and it would not win another game that year.
Carolyn Andros

The 2020 Tigers are not Rip Scherer’s defense. Even after shutting down Navy, Memphis ranks 106th in the country (out of 127 teams), allowing 457 yards per game. But Saturday night in Annapolis, that defense rose when it had to, in particular sophomore safety Quindell Johnson. The New Orleans native delivered a fumble-causing hit behind the Navy line of scrimmage on fourth down to end one second-quarter drive with the game tied at 7. Then on the next Midshipman drive, Johnson stepped in front of a Tyger Goslin pass for an interception with Navy already in field-goal range. Rare is the defensive playmaker in modern college football. But Johnson, Morris Joseph (two tackles for loss), and Sanchez Blake (forced a Navy fumble) made key plays last weekend to earn Memphis a third straight victory.

“It isn’t easy coming to Navy’s home field and beating them,” said Johnson after the win. “We all had fun, flying around, just playing together, communicating. We lead as a defense when we play like that.”


• Seven is a lucky number . . . and well earned. Should the Tigers beat Tulane this weekend, it will mark seven straight seasons with at least seven wins for the Memphis program. It would extend an already unprecedented stretch, as the longest streak of seven-win seasons before the current one was four years (from 1960 to ’63 and 1973 to ’76). Better yet, two more wins would make it seven seasons in a row with eight victories for the Tigers. (If COVID testing allows, the Tigers should play three more games, including a bowl contest.) The University of Memphis has a history with more valleys than peaks, but we are witnessing a golden era, one that now stretches across three head-coaching administrations. Fans tend to get lost either in the past or with what’s to come (recruiting is everything, remember). If you wear blue and gray in these parts, you’d do well to pause, raise a glass, and salute the now of Memphis Tiger football.

• Ten thousand is a big number . . . also well earned. With 88 passing yards at Tulane, Brady White will become only the second Memphis quarterback to top 10,000 yards for his career. (Danny Wimprine’s record is 10,215.) White’s 2,602 yards this season are eighth in the country and his 24 touchdown passes this year are tied for fourth. The superlatives will keep coming a few more weeks for the Ph.D. candidate, now with a record 26 wins to his credit as Tiger quarterback. It will be interesting to see how NFL  scouts view White’s credentials. His two predecessors — Paxton Lynch and Riley Ferguson — also put up big numbers, but fell short of signal-calling duty on Sundays, even with Lynch having been drafted (by Denver) in the first round. White is blessed with physical tools, but not the size or arm strength of most men you see winning Super Bowls. He’s also skilled between the ears and, simply put, knows how to win. Here’s hoping he gets the chance to compete for an NFL job in 2021. He won’t be intimidated by the challenge.

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Tigers 10, Navy 7

CREDIT: Carolyn Andros

Memphis and Navy played Saturday night like a pair of programs knock out of alignment by the coronavirus. In the lowest-scoring game Memphis has played since 1999, the Tigers came away with a victory thanks to a 26-yard field goal by senior kicker Riley Patterson in the fourth quarter. The three points proved to be just enough when Navy kicker Bijan Nichols pushed a 45-yard attempt just right of his target on the ensuing possession.
Carolyn Andros

Quindell Johnson and the Memphis defense held firm.

With the win, Memphis improves to 6-2 for the season and 4-2 in the American Athletic Conference. After winning their first three league games, Navy has now lost three in a row and falls to 3-3 in the AAC (3-5 overall).

The Tigers’ first road win of the season came ugly. In the first half, Memphis punted the ball three times, lost a fumble (by Tahj Washington after a lengthy gain), and saw a Patterson field-goal attempt from 52 yards sail right. Their only points came on a 14-yard scoring strike from senior quarterback Brady White to junior receiver Calvin Austin. That touchdown, late in the first quarter, tied the score at seven and would be the game’s last tally before Patterson’s game-winning field goal in the fourth quarter.

Sophomore safety Quindell Johnson came up big, particularly in the first half, ending one drive with a fourth-down tackle behind the line of scrimmage, then ending the next with an interception inside the Tigers’ 20-yard line. Freshman linebacker Cole Mashburn recovered a Navy fumble early in the fourth quarter to extinguish another Midshipman drive.

White completed 18 of 32 passes for 205 yards, leaving him within 100 yards of becoming only the second Memphis quarterback to top 10,000 for his career. Marquavius Weaver led the Tiger ground game with merely 49 yards. (Dreke Clark sat out the game with an injury.) Washington caught four passes for 68 yards and senior tight end Sean Dykes had six catches for 47 yards.

The Tigers won despite gaining a total of only 280 yards, 38 fewer than Navy.

Memphis returns to the road next Saturday to face Tulane (5-5) in New Orleans. The Tigers are now a win away from an unprecedented seventh straight season with seven victories.

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VCU 70, Tigers 59

CREDIT: Richard Carlson/Inertia

Playing their third game in three days at the Crossover Classic in Sioux Falls, the Tigers fell to VCU Friday night in the third-place game. (West Virginia beat Western Kentucky earlier Friday for the tournament championship.) Vince Williams led the Rams with 15 points off the bench, supporting starters KeShawn Curry (14 points) and Nah’Shon Hyland (12 points) in a win that improves VCU to 2-1 to start the season while Memphis drops to 1-2.
Richard Carlson/Inertia

Damion Baugh

The Rams shot 44 percent from the field while holding the Tigers to 35 percent. D.J. Jeffries led Memphis with 17 points and Lester Quinones had 11, despite missing eight of his 11 shots from the field. Boogie Ellis scored 10 points off the Tiger bench. A day after putting up 25 points against Western Kentucky, Landers Nolley scored only five in 29 minutes of playing time.

The Tigers had six more turnovers (19) than assists (13) in their worst showing of the trip to the South Dakota.

“We are not there yet, but we’re going to get there,” said Memphis coach Penny Hardaway, staring at a losing record for only the second time in three seasons at the helm. “We have been working so hard. Everyone is buying in. We have no selfish players on the offensive end, and we should be one of the better defensive teams in the country. We get in this tournament and things go south, but now you have to learn from it.”

Memphis will host its first game of the new season Wednesday night when Arkansas State visits FedExForum. Their current schedule includes only three other games (December 4th, 8th, and 12th, all at home) before American Athletic Conference play begins (December 16th, at Tulane).

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Western Kentucky 75, Tigers 69

CREDIT: Dave Eggen/Inertia

Playing their second game in 24 hours, the Tigers came up short in the semifinals of the Crossover Classic Thursday afternoon in Sioux Falls. Charles Bassey (21 points, 14 rebounds, 6 blocks) and Carson Williams (14 points, 9 rebounds) proved too much for Memphis to handle in a game that featured 10 lead changes. The Tigers reduced a seven-point deficit to two points over the game’s final three minutes, but the Hilltoppers’ Kenny Cooper hit a pair of clinching free throws with 4.1 seconds on the clock after a Landers Nolley three-pointer made the score 71-69.
Dave Eggen/Inertia

Landers Nolley

Nolley led Memphis with 25 points and hit six of ten three-point attempts. Sophomore guard Boogie Ellis added 14 points off the bench, ten fewer than he scored in Wednesday’s quarterfinal win over Saint Mary’s. D.J. Jeffries led the Tigers with 10 rebounds but scored only six points.

The Hilltoppers shot 44 percent from the field and hit 19 of 24 free throws. The Tigers shot 42 percent and made six of 11 from the foul line. Thanks largely to Bassey, Western Kentucky dominated on the glass with 44 rebounds to the Tigers’ 31.

“That was a very tough one,” said Memphis head coach Penny Hardaway. “Right now, we’re just a new team. We played an older team that knows how to win. In those games, we have to impose our will on them first, which we did, but we have to keep it on them the entire game, and we didn’t do that. I’ll learn from this, and we will get better.”

Now 1-1, Memphis will play the loser of the second semifinal (VCU and 15th-ranked West Virginia) in a consolation game Friday.

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Tigers 73, Saint Mary’s 56

CREDIT: Dave Eggen/Inertia

Boogie Ellis hit all six of his three-point attempts — including a buzzer-beating bank shot from just inside the half-court line to end the first half — to lead the Tigers to a season-opening win over Saint Mary’s in the quarterfinals of the Crossover Classic in Sioux Falls. The sophomore guard came off the bench and scored a career-high 24 points to help Memphis advance to the semifinals of the tournament, where they’ll play the winner of today’s Northern Iowa-Western Kentucky game on Thanksgiving.
Dave Eggen/Inertia

Boogie Ellis

The Tigers fell behind 8-0, but took the lead on a putback layup by freshman center Moussa Cisse midway through the first half. They would not trail again. Ellis’s circus shot gave the U of M a 42-26 lead at the break and the margin grew beyond 20 points (49-28) three minutes into the second half.

Cisse scored  10 points and pulled down seven rebounds in his Tiger debut. Transfer Landers Nolley also started in his first game for Memphis, scoring 11 points. Sophomore guard Damion Baugh added 10 points off the bench.

After leading the country in field-goal-percentage defense last season, the Tigers put the clamps on the Gaels, forcing 17 misses among 18 three-point attempts. Overall, Saint Mary’s shot 34 percent from the field while Memphis converted 43 percent of its shots.

Matthias Tass led the Gaels with 15 points.

“We are trying to be the number-one team in the country in opponent field goal percentage,” said Tiger coach Penny Hardaway, having started his third straight season with a victory. “That is something that we want to be at the very top in every year. For the most part, I am proud of the defense in holding that team to 56 points. With the way they like to play, that says a lot. We want to be the best defensive team in the country for sure.”

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2020-21 Tiger Hoops Preview

If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.

If the Almighty pays any attention to college basketball, He must have lost His breath by the end of the Memphis Tigers’ 2019-20 season. Penny Hardaway’s second winter as head coach was to be the revival of a once-proud program, and then some. The country’s most heralded recruiting class arrived. Surely a deep NCAA-tournament run awaited come March.

HA! The country’s top freshman — James Wiseman — departed the program after three games, neck deep in NCAA investigative eyes after a financial exchange between Hardaway (then East High School’s coach) and Wiseman’s family in 2017. The team’s second-leading scorer, D.J. Jeffries, went down with a knee injury the first week in February. Then just as the Tigers completed a second straight season in fifth place among American Athletic Conference teams . . . a pandemic eliminated March Madness. Pin that among your Memphis basketball seasons to remember.

Landers Nolley II

But Tiger basketball is back, pandemic be damned. Gone, of course, is Wiseman, along with Precious Achiuwa, the electric forward who became the first Tiger freshman to earn conference Player of the Year honors. (Wiseman and Achiuwa were the 2nd and 20th selections, respectively, in last week’s NBA draft, the first former Tigers chosen since 2012.) The U of M’s top three-point shooter over the last two seasons — Tyler Harris — transferred to Iowa State, two seasons of Hardaway’s tutelage enough for his ambitions. When the Tigers open play Wednesday in the Crossover Classic in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, they’ll do so against the Saint Mary’s Gaels and not the Ohio State Buckeyes, the latter having pulled out of the event over, you guessed it, coronavirus concerns. (Duke also pulled out of the tournament. Positivity rates in South Dakota have recently topped 50 percent.)

Last year’s acclaimed freshmen — at least the five who remain — are now sophomores: guards Boogie Ellis, Lester Quinones, and Damion Baugh, and forwards Jeffries and Malcolm Dandridge. Hardaway expects, with a season behind them, these young veterans will make a larger impact than they did as college rookies. Add to this group a pair of significant transfers: sophomore Landers Nolley II (from Virginia Tech) and DeAndre Williams (from Evansville, pending NCAA approval to play this season). Nolley averaged 15.5 points per game for the Hokies last season and will be asked to fill the sharp-shooting role vacated by Harris. He hit 68 three-pointers as a freshman, but shot an underwhelming 32 percent from long distance. Williams started 15 games for the Purple Aces and averaged 15.2 points.

A pair of juniors — guard Alex Lomax and forward Lance Thomas — bring more experience to the floor for Memphis, though neither has found the consistency Hardaway would like to see. Having played for Hardaway since middle school, Lomax has adopted the “glue guy” role and will be expected to blanket opposing ball-handlers and shooters. Thomas teases with his height (6’9″) but averaged only 2.5 rebounds in 15 minutes per game last season. (He made 13 starts.)

Moussa Cisse

The star of Hardaway’s third recruiting class is center Moussa Cisse. A native of Guinea, the 6’10” Cisse averaged 18.4 points, 15.3 rebounds, and 9.2 blocks in leading Lausanne Collegiate School to a 2020 state championship. He was the top-ranked prospect in Tennessee after reclassifying last summer to the 2020 class. He’s the kind of interior defensive presence the Tiger program has lacked, for the most part, over the last decade. And nothing starts a fast break better than a blocked shot.

The Tigers are projected to finish second (behind Houston) in the preseason AAC coaches poll. They did not place a player on the first-team preseason all-conference squad (Jeffries and Nolley made the second team), and they are outside the Top 25 looking in. Cisse is picked to win the league’s Rookie of the Year honor, but Hardaway, needless to say, is aiming for loftier achievements.

“It’s refreshing to have [last year’s] freshmen understand their roles now,” says Hardaway. “They put a lot of pressure on themselves last season. And to see how good Landers and DeAndre are . . . they’re great additions. We feel like we have the talent, but we haven’t proven anything yet. We’re going to have to earn everything.”

After three games in Sioux Falls, the Tigers will open their home schedule December 2nd when Arkansas State visits FedExForum. (Attendance will be limited to between 3,000 and 3,500 fans, at least at the season’s outset.) There will be only two other nonconference foes (Mississippi Valley State and Auburn) before the Tigers embark, fingers firmly crossed, on a 20-game league gauntlet.

“The two years I’ve coached [at this level] have taught me a lot,” says Hardaway. “I don’t think anything we’ll surprise me. We’re ready for every situation, any scenario. After two years, I’ve seen what I need to do as a coach. In the beginning, I was fast-tracking everything. But I’m caught up, and looking at things better on and off the court.”

The University Memphis has somehow played six seasons without reaching the Big Dance, and the program hasn’t gone seven years without proper Madness since the days when the tournament invited fewer than 30 teams (1963-72). Will there be a 2021 NCAA tournament? Will it be played in a single-city “bubble” for pandemic protection? A bigger question for a long-frustrated Tiger fan base: Would a return to the tournament bring jubilation, or merely a sigh of relief? Take a few deep breaths and grab your face coverings, because we’re about to find out.