Category: Tiger Blue

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Title Trail?

Kendric Davis and Penny Hardaway (photo by Larry Kuzniewski)

The Memphis Tigers are competing in their tenth season as members of the American Athletic Conference. They have yet to win a league championship, neither a regular-season title nor the postseason tournament. (The Tigers have twice lost in the tournament final.) What kind of chances do the 2022-23 Tigers have for ending this drought, for earning the program’s first conference crown since they were Conference USA champs in 2013? With mighty Houston setting the pace, Memphis can’t afford more than four losses among their 18 league games. Even three defeats might be too many to top the Cougars, so Sunday’s loss at Tulane didn’t help. But there are three factors that, if blended properly, could result in a first-place finish for Memphis.

• Senior motivation. No fewer than ten Tiger seniors are competing for playing time, for coach Penny Hardaway’s trust as he distributes a total of 200 player minutes each game. Half of these players are fifth-year seniors, now midway through their final college rodeo. For this group of Tigers … this is it. There’s no building for a 2024 run. There’s no more time for development, for learning where they best fit, for establishing rapport with teammates. There’s something to be said for desperation when it comes to chasing a championship.

Hardaway has been starting a pair of point guards: Alex Lomax and Kendric Davis (both fifth-year seniors). It’s intentional, and as much for the leadership intangible as the skill sets Lomax and Davis bring. Memphis is 11-4 and has four SEC notches on its belt, but has yet to crack the Top 25. Lomax and Davis see this, as do each of their senior brethren. The search for national attention — “respect” is the word used in front of cameras — remains a motivator for Hardaway’s leaders. “Add DeAndre [Williams],” says Hardaway, “and that’s three guys who understand time, possession, the moment. They work through adversity. They’re connected, so that makes it even better.”

• Solid jaw. The Tigers have yet to lose consecutive games. Halfway through the season, Memphis has shown it can take a punch. The Tulane loss may reveal more than any other blow the Tigers absorb this winter. Not only do they need to avoid a second loss in a row (Saturday against East Carolina), but they need to build a winning streak if they hope to threaten Houston atop the AAC. The comeback victory over USF last week to open conference play may be the calling card Hardaway utilizes in the weeks ahead as his team hopes to climb in both the standings and the national conversation. “Early in a game, you know you can come back,” says Hardaway. “But late in the game? Can you stay calm enough under the pressure? The best players, they stay firm and calm in chaos. They don’t panic.”

• That guy. Championship teams have “that guy,” the player everyone in the arena knows will have the ball at winning time. Kendric Davis is that player for these Memphis Tigers. Atop the AAC in both scoring (20.4 points per game) and assists (6.1), Davis is well on his way to a second straight league Player of the Year award. With the Tigers down ten with ten minutes to play against USF, Davis took over. He drained a three-pointer, stole the ball in the USF backcourt and converted a layup, then fed a lob to Williams for a thunderous dunk. He was playing in a zone the other nine players couldn’t reach and it was enough for the Tigers to escape an ugly home loss. “He’s a closer,” says Hardaway. “That’s the blessing of having him on your team. You know he has that type of run in him. He puts the work in. He was getting down during the [USF] game, and I told him, ‘You’re a killer. Don’t forget that. It’s what you do.’ He was looking for his moment and it came.”

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Sports Tiger Blue

First Responder Bowl: Tigers 38, Utah State 10

Ryan Silverfield (photo by Larry Kuzniewski)

The Memphis Tigers thoroughly dominated Utah State of the Mountain West Conference Tuesday afternoon to win the SERVPRO First Responder Bowl in Dallas. The margin of victory (28 points) is the largest in the 15-game bowl history of the Memphis football program and completes the Tiger season with a 7-6 record. The Tigers have not had a losing season since 2013, their worst finish since then a 6-6 mark after the 2021 campaign. With the victory, Ryan Silverfield becomes only the second Memphis coach to win two bowl games. (Tommy West led the Tigers to postseason wins in 2003 and 2005.)

The Tigers took control by scoring on four consecutive possessions in the first half, three of them touchdown passes by sophomore quarterback Seth Henigan. Eddie Lewis scored on a 15-yard toss midway through the second quarter, then again on a 22-yard strike with just under three minutes to play before halftime. When Henigan found tight end Caden Prieskorn on a nifty inside pass from the three-yard line, Memphis led 24-3.

Neither team scored in the third quarter and the Aggies finally found the end zone early in the fourth on a 44-yard catch-and-run by Brian Cobbs. But Tiger sophomore Jevyon Ducker scored touchdowns on the Tigers’ next two possessions — the second one a 48-yard jaunt — to put the game out of reach.

Fifth-year senior Sylvonta Oliver led the Memphis defense with a pair of interceptions and Joel Williams also picked off an Aggie pass. The Tiger pass rush sacked Utah State quarterbacks (Cooper Legas and Bishop Davenport) four times.

Henigan finished the game with 284 yards passing, completing 20 of 29 passes without throwing an interception. Ducker led the ground game with 83 yards on 13 carries while Lewis matched Ducker’s yardage total on five receptions.

Silverfield and Henigan will return for the 2023 season, along with the top-ranked recruiting class in the American Athletic Conference. The class is ranked 55th in the country by ESPN.

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Senior Community

Senior guard Kendric Davis (photo by Larry Kuzniewski)

In more than a century of University of Memphis basketball, we have never seen a team like coach Penny Hardaway’s current roster. Particularly in the era of “one-and-done” NBA-bound talent, the Tigers’ collection of seniors — essentially Hardaway’s entire rotation — is extraordinary. In Saturday’s win over Ole Miss, nine of the ten players who took the floor for the home team at FedExForum were classified as seniors. (The outlier was redshirt-freshman Johnathan Lawson.) Contrast this with the end of the 2021-22 season, when only one Tiger was saluted on Senior Day. That player (Alex Lomax) is once again a senior this season.

There are a few qualifiers to this outbreak of senioritis in the Memphis program. The pandemic restrictions of the 2020-21 campaign (one that ended with an NIT championship for Memphis) led to an extra year of eligibility for college players nationwide. Thus you see Lomax playing an unprecedented fifth full season in blue and gray. Three of his senior classmates — Kendric Davis, DeAndre Williams, and Elijah McCadden — are also enjoying that “5th-year senior” classification. And no fewer than six of the nine seniors in the Tiger rotation are transfers, having played for other programs before arriving in Memphis. Malcolm Dandridge and Jayden Hardaway (Penny’s son) will join Lomax this season as the only players to suit up four years under Hardaway. Being a senior these days is different from what you remember about high school (or college).

How is this veteran roster impacting the culture and competitive strength of the Tiger program? It’s hard to imagine the group being rattled, either by small-scale disappointment (Seton Hall’s buzzer-beating bank shot to beat them in Orlando) or larger issues like a significant injury or losing streak. This group has seen a lot. Those nine rotation seniors entered this season with a combined total of 29 college seasons under their belts. The ten Tigers who played in the loss to Gonzaga during last season’s NCAA tournament had a combined 15 full seasons behind them. Memphis may or may not have the best talent in the American Athletic Conference. But it will be hard to find another team in the entire country, let alone the AAC, to match the Tigers’ “battle-tested” metric.

“They’re definitely taking on my personality,” said Hardaway (the coach), after last week’s win over North Alabama. “They really want to win. They have chips on their shoulders because they feel like they haven’t gotten the respect they deserve. Coming together as a team, we gained some guys who know how to play and want to win. That’s what you’re seeing.”         

Penny’s personality — certainly that collective chip balanced on Tiger shoulders — will come in handy as the Tigers face three more SEC teams in eight days (December 10-17). Memphis remains unranked, a peripheral threat, at least in the minds of AP voters. A win over Auburn (currently ranked 11th) or Alabama (8th) would move the Tigers closer to the national conversation. 

Then, of course, there’s the American Athletic Conference and dreams of a first AAC title for Memphis. In the way will be the Houston Cougars, the top-ranked team in the country. The Tigers and Cougars won’t meet on the floor until February 19th (in Texas), then the regular-season finale at FedExForum (March 5th). Lots of basketball to play between now and then, games that need to be treated as building blocks toward something larger. That will require a steady, mature, game-to-game approach. The kind of intangible seniors are known for.    

If you land tickets for that Senior Day showdown in early March, be sure and get to the arena early. The ceremony will take some time.

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Sports Tiger Blue

Three Thoughts: Punting Prowess

(Credit: Larry Kuzniewski)

• A remarkable streak will come to an end this season for the University of Memphis football program. Every season since 2016 (so six straight, through the 2021 campaign), the Tigers featured either a 1,000-yard rusher or a receiver with 1,000 yards through the air. The streak began with Anthony Miller hauling in 1,434 yards worth of receptions in 2016, and will end with Calvin Austin’s total (1,149 yards) last year. Even more astounding, in three of these seasons (2017-19), the Tigers had both a runner and receiver top 1,000 yards. Prior to this epic statistical era, the program record for such a streak was three (DeAngelo Williams’ three 1,000-yard rushing seasons from 2003 to 2005). Before the streak began, Memphis had only had a single 1,000-yard season by a receiver (Isaac Bruce in 1993).

Entering this Saturday’s game against North Alabama, Asa Martin leads Memphis with 331 rushing yards. Tight end Caden Prieskorn tops Tiger receivers with 480 yards. The Memphis offense has become “committee” oriented, among the explanations for the team’s 5-5 record. Stars win football games. They also draw fans.

• It’s hard to celebrate punters. In 2013, Tom Hornsey won the Ray Guy Award and first-team All-America honors as he shattered punting records for Memphis, but the team finished 3-9 for a sixth consecutive losing season. Fans don’t stand up and cheer when their punter trots onto the field. (They actually do the opposite.) A punter’s “success” is dripping with irony.

But it’s time we acknowledge the season Memphis punter Joe Doyle is having. The senior is second in the entire country with an average of 47.3 yards per punt, a figure that would break (barely) the Tiger record of 47.2, set by Spencer Smith in 2015. Better yet, 12 of Doyle’s 40 punts have pinned the Tigers’ opponent inside their own 20-yard line. And that’s where punters earn their trophies. A booming leg is one thing, and a cloud-seeking football can be fun to watch in flight. But can a punter “flip the field” when a team’s offense stalls? Joe Doyle can.

• The late Danton Barto will be saluted Saturday when his jersey number (59) becomes the seventh to be retired by the Memphis program. Barto’s Tiger record for career tackles (273) hasn’t been approached since he played his last game in 1993. He’ll join John Bramlett and Charles Greenhill as the only defensive players to receive the program’s ultimate honor, and he’s only the third Tiger to have played since 1990 and get his jersey retired (along with Isaac Bruce and DeAngelo Williams).

The Tigers will also salute a departing group of seniors, players who have enjoyed a level of success Barto didn’t. How many fans will be at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium to applaud these past and present Tiger heroes? A visit from an FCS opponent (North Alabama) the week before Thanksgiving is not a recipe for a large crowd, and Memphis has yet to see 30,000 fans in the stadium this season. Perhaps a 1 p.m. kickoff will help, but it will be chilly (forecast: low-40s), and won’t impact the standings in the American Athletic Conference. A sixth win, though, would clinch a ninth straight season of bowl eligibility for Memphis, an unprecedented run in these parts. It would be the kind of day that would fill Danton Barto with pride.

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Three Thoughts: Rock Bottom?

Brandon Thomas takes a handoff from Seth Henigan. (Credit: Larry Kuzniewski)

• Fourth and foul. Nothing spotlights (or exposes) a head football coach like the make-or-break decision of a fourth-down play. Memphis coach Ryan Silverfield made two such calls last Saturday that went awry and contributed to the Tigers’ seven-point loss to 25th-ranked UCF. With the game tied at 7 in the first quarter and the Tigers inside the Knights’ 10-yard line, Memphis faced fourth-and-one. Silverfield passed up a gimme field goal (three points) and called a running play in the shotgun formation. Taking the ball from quarterback Seth Henigan five yards behind the scrimmage, running back Brandon Thomas was stuffed short of the first down. UCF took over possession.

Then late in the third quarter, the score again knotted (21-21), Memphis faced fourth-and-16(!) from the Knights’ 39 after a lengthy delay to review a targeting penalty on the Tigers’ reserve tight end, John Hassell. (Do these kind of problems hit other programs?) A Henigan pass fell incomplete and UCF scored on its next possession, taking the lead for good. After the game, Silverfield said his team was not adept at “pooch punting” and felt they wouldn’t gain enough yardage in the exchange of possession. Needless to say, the Tigers gained no yardage in turning the ball over (again) on downs. Silverfield owned the calls, as he should. They don’t look good in the rearview mirror.

• This ain’t horseshoes. It’s easy to agonize over how close the Tigers might be to a 6-3 record, or even 7-2 (instead of 4-5). Blown leads and late losses to both Houston and East Carolina. Then consecutive defeats against teams ranked 25th in the country (first Tulane, then UCF). Memphis scored more points last Saturday (28) than any other team has against the Knights this season. But questionable calls, a missed (short) field-goal attempt, and two turnovers generally lead to losses, so Memphis is riding its longest losing streak (four games) in nine years. Making matters worse, all four losses are to American Athletic Conference teams, so the best Memphis can finish in the league is an even 4-4. This is a significant drop for a program that recently played in the AAC title game three straight seasons (2017-19).

Silverfield was here for those glory years as an assistant to Mike Norvell. Following Saturday’s loss, he acknowledged the Memphis fan base deserves better. “I respect our fan base, because they care,” said Silverfield, “and the expectations for this program aren’t what they were two years ago. I [hope] they will hang with us and continue to believe, because the players do. We’ll come out all right, I promise you that. The young men are staying true to this university. Everyone will show up Thursday [to play Tulsa] and continue to fight.”

• Bowl or bust? Silverfield mentioned the “noise” around the Memphis program. To translate: “Noise” means speculation a head coach could be replaced if wins aren’t secured, and soon. There are a lot of empty seats at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium on game days. (Attendance last Saturday was 28,048. The stadium seats more than 50,000.) Football remains the revenue engine of a university’s athletic department, so unsold tickets mean less to invest in women’s soccer or men’s golf. The face of the football program is outsized and inflated, but such is the nature of an industry that gobbles up television dollars for more than four months.

The Tigers can gain bowl eligibility for a ninth straight season with two wins in their final three games. It’s hard to envision Silverfield being retained if they don’t. Memphis will beat North Alabama (1-8) on November 19th. Which means they must beat Tulsa (3-6) at home this Thursday or SMU (5-4) on the road on November 26th. Bottom line: Thursday’s game is a must-win for Ryan Silverfield. The two best feelings in sports are winning a championship and ending a losing streak. Here’s hoping a wobbly Memphis football program can achieve the latter against the Golden Hurricane.

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Sports Tiger Blue

Tigers Tip-Off Hardaway’s Fifth Season with New Roster

Penny Hardaway (photo by Larry Kuzniewski)

The pinnacle of the Coach Penny Hardaway era at the University of Memphis — now four years and counting — was halftime of the Tigers’ NCAA tournament game against Gonzaga on March 19, 2022. Playing in the program’s first “March Madness” since 2014, Memphis led the country’s top-ranked team by 10 points, a spot in the Sweet 16 (for the first time since 2009) there for the taking. Alas, Tiger shooting went cold, the Zags rallied, and another season ended for the U of M and its considerable fan base.

Among the 10 players who played in that game for Memphis, seven have moved on. And here’s the twist to that reality: All seven could have returned for another season in blue and gray. Everyone knew star freshman Jalen Duren was “one and done” and he was chosen by Charlotte with the 13th pick in the NBA draft (then traded to Detroit). Josh Minott went to Minnesota in the second round and Lester Quinones also found his way to the pros (Golden State, as an undrafted free agent). But also gone, via transfer, are Landers Nolley, Tyler Harris, Earl Timberlake, and last year’s recruiting sensation, Emoni Bates. Those seven players would make a rotation all but certain to qualify for another Big Dance. Instead, Hardaway was left to build his fifth roster virtually from scratch.

Such is life with the transfer portal in modern college hoops. Hardaway pivoted quickly and lured the 2022 American Athletic Conference Player of the Year — point guard Kendric Davis — from SMU. Davis led the AAC with 19.4 points per game last season and will be playing for this third program in five years (he spent the 2018-19 season at TCU). Two other transfers — both guards — may well find themselves in Hardaway’s starting lineup for the season opener at Vanderbilt (November 7th): Keonte Kennedy (late of UTEP) and Elijah McCadden (Georgia Southern). Kennedy averaged 14.1 points and pulled down 6.1 rebounds per game last season for the Miners while McCadden’s numbers with the Eagles were 11.7 and 4.6, good enough for the Sun Belt’s Sixth Man honors.

“We’re an older group,” acknowledges McCadden (a fifth-year senior), “so we’re gelling. We know what we’re here to do. We want to win. We have one main goal, and not a lot of years to grow together. We’ll make the most of the short time we have.”

There will, in fact, be a few familiar faces in uniform for the Tigers. Guard Alex Lomax has spent a full decade — since middle school — playing for Hardaway and returns for a fifth college season. (Remember, players were granted a bonus year of eligibility when the pandemic restricted play in 2020-21.) Then there’s forward DeAndre Williams, back for a third season with the Tigers at the tender age of 26. Williams was second to Duren on last year’s team in both scoring (11.1 points per game) and rebounds (5.8). Expect both figures to grow this season for Williams, named (along with Davis) to the AAC’s preseason all-conference team.

“As a unit, they have to do more than play basketball,” says Hardaway. “They have to hang together off the court. Understand each other on all levels. That carries over. They have to develop an identity early: Who do we want to be? And live up to that identity every single night. I want it to be about toughness. And defense.”

Even with the roster turnover, the offseason was good to Hardaway. The program is finally out from under a three-year cloud, an NCAA-mandated agency (IARP) all but absolving Hardaway from wrongdoing in the recruiting of James Wiseman. So no suspension and no exclusion from upcoming NCAA tournaments (should the Tigers qualify). Then in October, the U of M announced a six-year contract extension that should keep Hardaway on the Memphis bench at least until 2028. Plenty of time for this city’s most famous basketball son to win his first conference title (the Tigers were picked to finish second, behind Houston) and get his alma mater back to the Sweet 16 or, dare it be dreamed, the Final Four.

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Three Thoughts: Bitter Taste

Linebacker Xavier Cullens (photo by Larry Kuzniewski)

So close . . . and so far. The Tigers have lost consecutive games by a total of three points. Brutal stuff. With as few as two plays going differently — an onside kick against Houston, a two-point attempt at East Carolina — Memphis would be riding a six-game winning streak and heading to Tulane for a clash of 6-1 teams near the top of the American Athletic Conference. Instead, the Tigers are staring at a formidable foe that could reduce Memphis to a .500 team entering its bye week, with UCF (5-1) looming November 5th. Such is the nature of college football for programs trying to establish footing in a transition period.

And that’s what this feels like, even with Ryan Silverfield overseeing his third season as head coach. Memphis is playing with a first-year offensive coordinator (Tim Cramsey) and a first-year defensive coordinator (Matt Barnes). The Tigers have a veteran quarterback, if a sophomore (Seth Henigan) can be called such. But other stars have yet to emerge. Plenty of backs (Asa Martin, Jevyon Ducker, Brandon Thomas) and receivers (Gabriel Rogers, Joseph Scates, Caden Prieskorn) tease with big plays, but do any feel like The Go-To Guy? I’m convinced Memphis needs That Guy to avoid these crushing, narrow, late-game defeats. For now, ending a losing streak sits atop Silverfield’s priority list. That bye week will feel like a month if the streak is extended to three at Tulane.

Get six (wins). For Memphis, the 2022 American Athletic Conference championship is out. No team with two league losses will qualify for the December 3rd title game. But goals (and priorities) remain, starting with the six wins (a .500 record) necessary for bowl eligibility. The Tiger program is on an unprecedented streak of eight consecutive years reaching that standard, a minimum these days if a football program is to be considered competitive. (And let’s remember the days — as recently as 2011 — when bowl eligibility seemed beyond reach for the Tiger program. Then Justin Fuente came to town.)

The Tigers must win but two of their final five games to qualify for a bowl. North Alabama — an FCS program, currently 1-5 — is a gimme (November 19th), but Memphis will have to earn a sixth, or seventh, or eighth victory. The Tigers will be underdogs against Tulane (Saturday) and UCF (November 5th). Tulsa (November 10th, a Thursday) and SMU (November 26th) are tests, it seems, one season after another, whether on the road or at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium. The 2022 season has grown uncomfortable for a football team that rode a four-game winning streak into October. Still much to play for.

Missing Q. Entering the season, senior safety Quindell Johnson was the Tigers’ most celebrated defensive player. Considering an injury forced Johnson to leave the Houston game in the second half and miss the entire contest at East Carolina, he may have been undervalued. The Tigers have blown leads of 19 points and 17 points while Johnson recuperates from the undisclosed ailment.

Memphis has dropped to eighth in the AAC in scoring defense (30.1 points allowed per game) and ninth in total defense (419.6 yards allowed). It’s easy to point fingers at the Tiger offense getting conservative with those big leads (or with a two-point attempt to beat the Pirates), but the Memphis defense has been on the field as those leads evaporated. And it’s not a one-man bunch. Silverfield described linebacker Xavier Cullens’s play as “All-American” over the first month of the season. Cornerback Sylvonta Oliver had ten solo tackles against ECU. But it’s a defense that has both bent and broken the last two weeks. With or without its senior leader, the Memphis defense needs to rise as the temperature drops.

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Three Thoughts: Recovery Mode

Ryan Silverfield (Credit: Larry Kuzniewski)

“Remember the Cougars.” Last Friday’s fourth-quarter collapse against Houston could linger as a stench over the Memphis program the rest of this season, perhaps the rest of Ryan Silverfield’s tenure as head coach. Or it could become a rallying cry, of a sort, a reminder of how much can be gained, but the cost of a lapse. The Cougars are clearly better than their record (2-3) suggested at kickoff last week. It takes a very good team to lead the Cougars by 19 points in the final quarter. Memphis is that team. Memphis is also the team that coughed up that lead like a Bengal-sized hairball.

What Silverfield, his staff, and players must avoid is dismissing the collapse as water under the bridge. Because the Tiger fan base won’t. This program is at a crossroads, eager for bigger things (starting with the league in which it plays) but unable to get 30,000 fans into a stadium that seats more than 50,000. Silverfield must sell a better product than the one 28,000 fans saw on October 7th. I’m convinced he has a better product … unless that stench truly settles in.

Gabe’s Game. My stack of Memphis football media guides reveals no previous Tiger to have pulled off a trifecta like that of fifth-year senior Gabriel Rogers against Houston: a rush, pass, and reception of at least 15 yards each. A sad footnote to the fourth-quarter meltdown is that a Tiger victory would have likely been remembered as “the Gabriel Rogers game.” He was that extraordinary, particularly in tossing a 41-yard touchdown pass to Asa Martin (after receiving a lateral from quarterback Seth Henigan) to give the Tigers that 19-point lead (26-7) early in the final quarter.

Rogers leads the Tigers with 302 receiving yards (on 22 catches), and he put up 71 of those yards against the Cougars. He also gained 23 rushing yards on just two carries. He was that fabled “triple threat” of lore, only in a game his team gave away. But halfway through the 2022 campaign, the Tigers have a front-runner for the playmaker tag. Keep your eyes on number 9 when Memphis snaps the ball.

Recognizing a rival. A longtime problem for the Memphis program: No annual “rivalry game.” No, the Tigers and Ole Miss — or Mississippi State — aren’t rivals in the classic college football sense. (A series must be more competitive over a longer period of time.) The Tigers built up some rivalry with UCF and Houston, but both the Knights and Cougars are departing the American Athletic Conference for the Big 12 next year. In searching for a familiar foe that has tested Memphis for a couple of decades (or three), it’s the East Carolina Pirates. Motivation shouldn’t  be a problem this Saturday in Greenville.

The Pirates and Tigers went back and forth last season at the Liberty Bowl, ECU prevailing in overtime, but only when Memphis failed on a two-point attempt to win. The Tigers trail the series, 16-8, primarily due to a dominant seven-year winning streak by East Carolina when the Memphis program found itself staggering for leadership (2006-2012). One of two Tiger teams will show up this weekend: One still reeling from the program’s worst collapse in memory, or a group mobilized to prove it’s not that team. East Carolina feels like the right opponent for such a clash.

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Tiger Blue: Henigan, As In “Win Again”

Tiger quarterback Seth Henigan (photo by Larry Kuzniewski)

• Lots of elbow room. The first day of October was a perfect day for football in Memphis, Tennessee. Not a cloud in the sky, temperatures in the mid-60s at kickoff as the Tigers hosted Temple at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium. The game started early (11 a.m.), but that somehow made the sunshine seem brighter, the air even more crisp. And 23,239 fans showed up to see the home team win its fourth straight game. That’s less than half the capacity of the stadium and left room for kids to play tag in the upper levels while much larger boys played a form of tag down on the gridiron. This was an important game for Memphis against a conference rival that beat the Tigers a year ago. Yet kids played tag in empty sections of bleachers.

With plans in place for more than $200 million in renovations to the stadium, this has to be a concern for the Memphis program. We seem to have returned to a place where the “core fans” show up for every Tiger home game, but those who packed the place for that epic clash with SMU in 2019 — 58,325 fans — need more of a hook before spending a fall Saturday watching live college football. The Tigers are winning (now 4-1 on the season). They have a talented player at quarterback (Seth Henigan), the only position that matters to a casual fan. They have an opportunistic defense that forces turnovers and creates excitement. But does the Mid-South care that much about Tiger football?

• Is Seth Henigan a winner? Forget their record-breaking stats. Henigan’s three predecessors at quarterback for the Tiger program — Paxton Lynch, Riley Ferguson, and Brady White — each put up a 10-win season. (The Memphis program has a total of four such campaigns.) Can Henigan extend this streak to four? Can he go “1-0” enough weeks to create a season as memorable as 2014, or 2017, or 2019?

Saturday’s win over Temple suggests Henigan is capable of leading the Tigers to such heights. Because it was a rough game for the sophomore. Memphis didn’t score a point in the first half. Henigan barely completed more than half of his passes (24 for 45), and the Owls sacked him five times. But he didn’t throw an interception. He scrambled for yardage, once gaining 19 on a fourth-and-two play that broke down at the snap. It’s fun when a quarterback passes for 300 yards and three or four touchdowns. Those are for highlight reels. But the winners prevail when conditions aren’t pleasant, when they’re getting helped up from the turf every possession, when the punter is compiling more yardage. That was Seth Henigan against Temple last Saturday.

• Nice knowin’ ya. This Friday’s clash with Houston feels significant. The Cougars are departing the American Athletic Conference for the Big 12 next year, so this will be the end of what’s been an almost annual confrontation for a quarter century. (The teams have played 22 times since 1996 and were Conference USA rivals before the AAC was created.) And the games have been fun. Memphis has scored 50 points in beating the Cougars and allowed 50 points in losing to them.

Picked to win the AAC in the preseason media poll, Houston finds itself 2-3, with losses to future league rivals (Texas Tech and Kansas) and current (an overtime loss to Tulane last weekend). The Cougars have surrendered 34.0 points per game, 115th (out of 131 teams) in the country. The Tigers will not be facing the Temple Owls’ defense. Back to that first thought: It will be interesting to see the crowd Houston draws for a Friday-night affair at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium. Memphis-Houston may not be college football’s best, but it’s the best college football seen regularly in these parts for more than 20 years. Here’s hoping the programs find each other again somewhere down the road.

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Sports Tiger Blue

Three Thoughts: Bring On the Owls

Caden Prieskorn scored a first-quarter touchdown in Saturday's win over North Texas (photo by Larry Kuzniewski)

• Defense delivers. With a third of their season in the books, the Memphis Tigers are still determining this year’s playmakers. With star power, particularly on offense, a larger crowd than 23,203 shows up for a football game on a sunny afternoon in late September. Seth Henigan is among the best quarterbacks in the American Athletic Conference, if not the entire country. But he can’t sell tickets by himself. Tiger coach Ryan Silverfield likes to say his running backs — primarily Brandon Thomas, Jevyon Ducker, and Asa Martin — are “running hard,” but that’s not quite the same as running like Darrell Henderson or Kenneth Gainwell (each currently carrying footballs in the NFL).

But stars are emerging on the defensive side of the ball for Memphis. Early in the third quarter of Saturday’s win over North Texas, senior defensive end Jaylon Allen intercepted a Mean Green pass (on a ball tipped by Tiger cornerback Greg Rubin), and ran it back 39 yards for a touchdown to give Memphis a 27-13 lead. Allen, it should be noted, sacked UNT quarterback Austin Aune in the first half. Then early in the fourth quarter, with the Tiger lead down to seven points, senior linebacker Xavier (Zay) Cullens delivered another “pick six,” this one for 37 yards. The two defensive touchdowns were vital in a 10-point victory and suggest this year’s playmakers may emerge when the opponent snaps the ball.

• 59 forever. I’m rather thrilled for the family, friends, and many fans of the late Danton Barto, who will become the seventh Tiger football player to have his jersey (number 59) retired. We lost Barto way too soon, a victim last year of covid-19. But his legacy, to say the least, lives on. It’s hard to imagine Barto’s program record of 473 career tackles ever being topped. (The most by a Memphis player since Barto played his final game in 1993: 416 by Kamal Shakir.)

“The defense stepped up in a big way, and what a day to do so,” said Tiger coach Ryan Silverfield after Saturday’s win. He noted how pleased Barto would have been by the way Memphis won with big plays on defense. Barto is the third Tiger defensive player to receive the ultimate honor, joining John Bramlett, who had his jersey retired in 2013, and the late Charles Greenhill, who died in the 1983 plane crash that also killed Memphis coach Rex Dockery.

• Testy Temple. The Tigers’ history with Temple dates back only to 2013, just seven games. But the Owls have delivered a pair of painful recent defeats to Memphis, both in Philadelphia. In 2019, a controversial no-catch call late in the game cost the Tigers the win and, quite possibly, an undefeated regular season. Then last year, Memphis literally fumbled the game away, two turnovers proving to be the difference in a three-point Temple win. Henigan was asked after Saturday’s win if last year’s game is a motivator for this Saturday’s clash and he denied it is . . . but only after mentioning those fumbles.

The Owls are averaging merely 18 points per game, but they’re allowing only 15 (good for 18th in the country). Their two wins have come against Lafayette and Massachusetts, hardly the kind that shape a season. The Owls are 1-2 at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium, their win coming in 2016 (Mike Norvell’s first season as head coach). With a Friday-night visit from Houston looming (October 7th), the Tigers will be tested Saturday by a familiar villain. A 4-1 record entering the Houston game would look a lot better than 3-2.