Category: Tiger Blue

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Three Thoughts: Tigers Topple A-State

Photo by Larry Kuzniewski

• Audience Participation. Down five points with less than two minutes to play Saturday night at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium, Arkansas State faced fourth down near midfield. The Red Wolves were then penalized for false starts on consecutive plays. When the center finally snapped the football, he did so over the head of ASU quarterback James Blackman. When Memphis linebacker Jaylon Allen recovered the ball inside the Wolves’ 10-yard line, it all but clinched a Tiger victory. There have been larger crowds at a Tiger home opener, but there’s little doubt the 32,620 fans in attendance last Saturday helped Memphis improve to 2-1 this season.

Tiger coach Ryan Silverfield was appreciative. “That last drive, what they were able to do as a crowd. … It’s been a long time since I’ve seen something like that,” said Silverfield. “It started with the [pregame] Tiger Walk. We talk about ways to celebrate the city [for 901 Week]. I can’t say enough great things about how wonderful that crowd was. They get credit for the win. I’m proud of our guys’ perseverance. It wasn’t always pretty.”

• Big target. For a player who arrived at the University of Memphis as a walk-on quarterback, Caden Prieskorn has become one hell of a tight end. Prieskorn caught a pair of touchdown passes in the first half against Arkansas State, each time tying the score. But neither of those was his biggest catch of the game. That came on a fourth-and-five play late in the fourth quarter, the Tigers trailing (32-31) at the time. Despite not being quarterback Seth Henigan’s first pre-snap option, Prieskorn found a gap between an ASU linebacker and safety, and Henigan found Prieskorn for 17 yards to keep what proved to be the game-winning drive alive. The Tigers are deep at wide receiver this season, so Prieskorn makes the passing attack that much more dangerous.

“My body has changed the last three or four years,” said Prieskorn after the win. “I’ve gained 40 pounds. It’s been a long journey. Redshirting. Not getting a lot of playing time, behind a really good player in Sean Dykes. But he taught me a lot.” Prieskorn also threw a key block to help Henigan himself score on an 8-yard bootleg shortly before halftime. Basketball helped develop Prieskorn’s hands (for catching) in high school. But blocking is a newly learned talent, and one this rising Tiger star — all 255 pounds of him — should display on a weekly basis.

• What a rush. The Tigers ran the ball 45 times against the Red Wolves for 187 yards. In the pass-first world of modern football, this may as well have been the 1990s, with Chuck Stobart or Rip Scherer on the Memphis sideline. Jevyon Ducker led the Tigers with 75 yards, more than half of them coming on a game-winning 39-yard touchdown scamper in the fourth quarter. Brandon Thomas — the Tigers’ lead dog on the ground — gained 46 yards and also scored a touchdown. Freshman Sutton Smith entered the game in the second half and averaged seven yards on three carries. 

Best of all, particularly in Silverfield’s eyes, the Tigers didn’t turn the ball over. The running game suffered “fumble-itis” in dramatic fashion last season, costing Memphis at least one win, maybe two. If Saturday’s performance can be replicated, the Tiger offense will be a two-pronged handful for opposing defensive coordinators. Silverfield has a mantra for his team: Own the football. No better way to own it than by chewing up yardage and time with the ground game.

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Sports Tiger Blue

Three Thoughts: “It’s been a hard week.”

Quindell Johnson (photo by Larry Kuzniewski)

• “It’s been a hard week.” My favorite part of the Tigers’ win at Navy came immediately after the game when Memphis coach Ryan Silverfield choked up in responding to a question from the CBS Sports reporter. “Memphis is a great city, and the 901 will keep fighting.” I, for one, have been performing my job duties — be they mundane or somewhat important — in a fog since Eliza Fletcher was abducted on September 2nd, a fog thickened by the shooting spree that briefly locked down the city five days later. There are lost members of our community who won’t be coming back. And I find myself missing them, hurting especially for their families. Aching emotionally.

So I turn to sports now and then. But don’t you know each and every member of the Tiger football team’s staff and players has been operating in a fog, too. Fletcher’s abduction happened on the University of Memphis campus, for crying out loud. Most painful, for me, is the fact that the charged killers in these cases are Memphians. How do we reconcile that, we “the 901”? A football game feels like we’re all rooting together, our entire city, our entire small town. And a win feels good, especially the season’s first for Silverfield and his team. But then comes Sunday, followed by Monday. Probably a hard week ahead.

• No Flyer cover jinx. For the first time in memory, we put a defensive player on the cover of our annual Memphis football preview. Based on the way Quindell Johnson played in the win over Navy, you might want to hang on to that issue. The senior safety delivered 11 solo tackles and made a one-handed interception in the Tiger end zone to stifle a Navy scoring threat. It’s rare we see true playmakers on the defensive side of the ball, but Johnson has that air about him.

Arkansas State will pose a very different problem for Johnson and friends, of course. Navy ran the ball 58 times (a number that leads to high tackle totals) and only passed 11. The Memphis defense did more than bend in the opener at Mississippi State. Can it force the Red Wolves off the field long enough for Tiger quarterback Seth Henigan to put up another 400-yard game? May be the difference Saturday night.

• A month of home cooking. Chuck Stobart was calling the shots the last time Memphis hosted four consecutive home games. The 1994 Tigers swept all four, beating Arkansas, Tulane, Arkansas State, and Cincinnati. What jumps out in looking back 28 years? The scoring . . . and how little there was. The “Ground Chuck” Tigers won those four games despite scoring no more than 16 points in three of the contests. The Memphis defense allowed a total 24 points in the four games . . . a figure we’re likely to see Arkansas State put up (win or lose) this Saturday.

The Tigers’ season will be half over at the end of this home stand, which concludes with a Friday-night clash against Houston on October 7th.  The Cougars, of course, were picked to win the American Athletic Conference in the preseason media poll. It’s a time for the Tigers to dig in at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium (where they lost two games last season) and re-establish a discomfort level for opponents. They’ll need to score more than 16 points to win games, but keep that ’94 run on the bulletin board as a motivator.

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Sports Tiger Blue

Three Thoughts on Memphis Tiger Football

Ryan Silverfield (photo by Larry Kuzniewski)

• The SEC remains the SEC. Since shocking Peyton Manning and 6th-ranked Tennessee on November 9, 1996, Memphis has played teams from the Southeastern Conference 35 times . . . and lost 30 times. Most of these games have been against Ole Miss (the Tigers are 4-10 against the Rebels) and Mississippi State (1-10). Tiger fans relished recent victories over Ole Miss (2015 and 2019) and the Bulldogs (2021), but to think the gap has been closed with SEC competition would mean an extra shade of rose on the lenses. SEC programs operate with “resources” (read: money) that Memphis can’t approach. Alabama’s football revenue (just football) is considerably more than the U of M athletic department’s (all sports). For the Tigers to capture a rare win requires a precision in roster-building that simply can’t be replicated one year after another. That truth was made clear in the declawing suffered last Saturday in Starkville. Be grateful for those recent wins, ye Tiger faithful, but retain perspective — and don’t panic — when Memphis appears second-rate against an SEC foe.

• “Let’s not compare this guy to Mike Norvell.” A Twitter follower suggested this approach in evaluating the 2022 Tigers and their third-year head coach, Ryan Silverfield. Sorry to disappoint, but Silverfield will be compared with Norvell as long as he’s wearing blue and gray. Norvell hired him. Norvell nurtured Silverfield’s growth as an assistant coach for four years, all but placing him on a tee for Memphis to hire when Norvell departed for Florida State after winning the 2019 American Athletic Conference championship. Said U of M president David Rudd upon Silverfield’s hiring, “I am confident that he will build on a well-established foundation to help us take another step forward for Tiger football.” Well-established foundation. There the comparisons to Norvell began.

In Norvell’s third season as Tiger coach, Memphis lost at Tulane, 40-24. Three weeks later, the same team lost at Missouri, 65-33. (SEC . . . ugh.) Needless to say, better days arrived for Norvell and the Tigers. While we won’t find Anthony Miller or Tony Pollard on the current roster, there’s reason to believe better days will come for Silverfield in his third season as head coach, starting this Saturday at Navy.

• Stretch the arm, Seth. The Tigers will win (and lose) games on sophomore quarterback Seth Henigan’s right arm. Henigan was solid but well short of spectacular against Mississippi State. He completed 63 percent of his passes (19 for 30), but averaged only 5.5 yards per attempt. Compare this with the 8.5 he averaged last season as a freshman. (Brady White averaged 8.7 yards per attempt over his record-breaking three seasons as the Tigers’ quarterback.) Henigan didn’t throw an interception, so his decision-making passed the first-game test. But Memphis will have to stretch the field offensively, I’m convinced, to climb back into contention in the AAC. Seven players caught passes against the Bulldogs, so Henigan would seem to have targets. Here’s hoping new offensive coordinator Tim Cramsey draws up some plays with deep arrows for Saturday’s game at Navy.

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Sports Tiger Blue

Signature Season Nears for Memphis Tigers

Penny Hardaway (photo by Larry Kuzniewski)

If you track the last half-century of University of Memphis basketball, you’ll find a lot of success on the hardwood. You’ll also find what amounts to a signature season in virtually every decade. In 1973, Larry Finch, Ronnie Robinson, and Larry Kenon took an unforgettable Tiger team all the way to the championship game before falling to mighty UCLA. The 1985 Tigers returned to the Final Four in Keith Lee’s final season. In 1992, a sophomore sensation by the name of Penny Hardaway led an overlooked Tiger squad to the Elite Eight. Then in 2008, freshman Derrick Rose and a group of veteran stars went 38-2, losing an overtime heartbreaker to Kansas for the national championship. Four decades . . . four signature seasons.

Then, we had the 2010s. Nary a losing season, but also nary a signature season. The Tigers reached the NCAA tournament four straight years (2011-14), but never advanced to the second weekend (Sweet 16). Tubby Smith’s two years as coach (2016-18) were as awkward as Josh Pastner’s final two. Penny Hardaway — the greatest living Tiger legend — took over the program in 2018, but needed four seasons to lead a team to the Big Dance.

And what a dance it appeared to be for the 2021-22 Tigers. After beating Boise State in the opening round, Memphis led Gonzaga — the top-ranked team in the country — by 10 points at halftime before falling, 82-78, last Saturday in Portland. A lengthy tournament drought is over, but it’s now been 13 years without a Sweet 16 appearance for Memphis. And 14 years, really, since something we could call a signature season in these parts.

That special season is coming. If the Tigers’ battle with the Zags isn’t enough to convince you, consider their two beatings of the Houston Cougars, one by 10 points at Houston in February, the other by 14 points at FedExForum in March. The Cougars, you might be aware, play Villanova Saturday for a chance at a second-straight Final Four appearance. The Memphis Tigers are “there” without quite being there. Back, but not entirely.

After the Tigers handled Houston in their regular-season finale on March 6th, Hardaway noted the culture change that took place around his team as they reeled off 10 wins in their final 11 games. “We understood what the mission was. The way we could lock in, we weren’t looking ahead. Every game: 1 and 0. Staying in the moment, putting ourselves in a position to compete. We locked down, and relied on one another.”

We relied on one another. Are there any five words that more honestly capture the meaning of a team? The meaning of a team’s mission? The Tigers came up short of the program’s goal — certainly Penny Hardaway’s goal — this winter, but there seems to be a template now in place, one the coach and his returning players can utilize in seasons to come.

Not every player will return, of course. Jalen Duren — the American Athletic Conference’s Freshman of the Year — will be playing in the NBA a year from now, a sure lottery pick in June’s draft. Another freshman, Josh Minott, is departing for the professional ranks. The NCAA transfer portal is open for any and all other Tigers to move on should they feel greener pastures lie elsewhere. That portal is just as open for Hardaway to add an impact player or two for the 2022-23 campaign.

As for adjustments, Hardaway would be wise to emphasize the value of November and December to a college basketball team. A four-game losing streak after the Tigers opened last season with five victories made the rest of the schedule a climb to respectability and seriously compromised chances Memphis might land a seed higher than ninth for the NCAA tournament. Secure those non-conference games, then flex muscle in AAC play and you have the makings of, yes, a signature season.

We now know what a decade without a signature season in Memphis feels like. When will we enjoy the next one? You can be sure of this: We’ll recognize it when it happens.

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Sports Tiger Blue

Dancin’ Time for Memphis Tigers

Alex Lomax (photo by Larry Kuzniewski)

Ahhh. Now this feels like March. Thursday in Portland, the Memphis Tigers will play Boise State in the first round of the NCAA tournament. The game will take place just shy of eight years since Memphis last played in the Big Dance (a second-round loss to Virginia on March 23, 2014). It’s hard to imagine in these parts, but there are Memphis high-school kids with virtually no memory of the Tigers playing in college basketball’s showcase. After all, it was two American presidents and a pandemic ago. 

In this season’s spirit of renewal, a few not-so-random thoughts on the Tigers’ return to Madness: 

• Just how long was the Tigers’ seven-year drought without a dance card? You have to go all the way back to 1972 to find such a dry period. Then Memphis State, the Tigers did not qualify for the NCAA tournament for 10 years, from 1963 through 1972. In 1972, though, only 25 teams qualified for the tournament. Without a conference championship, a program had little chance of competing for the big prize. Today, it’s a 68-team field. As many as six or seven teams from hoops-rich conferences like the ACC, SEC, or Big 10 make the field. There was no tournament in 2020 as the pandemic took hold, but the Tigers’ seven-year absence from this event is just about as long as we can take.

• It’s been even longer — 13 years — since the Tigers advanced to the tournament’s second weekend, the Sweet 16. Memphis won at least two tournament games four straight years, from 2006 to 2009, reaching the regional finals (“Elite Eight”) three times (2006-08), and the 2008 championship, where the Tigers lost to Kansas in overtime. The program enjoyed a similar four-year run from 1982-85 (the Keith Lee years), reaching the Sweet 16 each season and the Final Four in ’85, where they lost to Villanova in the national semifinals.

• Penny Hardaway is the ninth coach to lead Memphis to the NCAA tournament. He appeared as a player in the 1992 and ’93 tournaments, helping the Tigers reach the Elite Eight as a sophomore. No Memphis coach made it to the Big Dance in his first season at the helm. It took Penny four.

• Larry Kenon scored 34 points in the first round of the 1973 tournament, setting a single-game Memphis record that stood for 36 years. Roburt Sallie — hardly a name that rolls off the tongue of Tiger fans — found his range in the opening game of the 2009 tournament and scored 35 points to establish a new standard.

• The Tigers will be led by a point guard who grew up in Memphis and wears number 10 on his jersey. For fans with some mileage on their tires, this should look familiar. Andre Turner led the Tigers to the NCAA tournament four consecutive years (1983-86), hit a game-winning shot on their way to the 1985 Final Four, and established a career assists record (763) that will never be broken. If Alex Lomax conjures the Little General this month, their could be a lot to celebrate.

• How unique was freshman Jalen Duren’s 21-point, 20-rebound performance in the quarterfinals of the American Athletic Conference tournament? In four full seasons as a Tiger, the great Keith Lee never had a 20-20 game. Ronnie Robinson had three in three seasons. Larry Kenon remarkably had seven 20-20 games in his only college season, helping the Tigers reach the 1973 Final Four. Enjoy Duren in the Big Dance. He’ll be dunking lobs in the NBA a year from now.

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Sports Tiger Blue

“Spiritual Momentum”

Lester Quinones (photo by Larry Kuzniewski)

Sunday at FedExForum felt like big-time college basketball. Jim Nantz and Bill Raftery were courtside to describe the Memphis-Houston game for a national television audience, the same CBS tandem we’ll see for the national championship on April 4th. The 14th-ranked Cougars stormed out of the visitors’ locker room, eager to avenge their only home loss of the season (to the Memphis Tigers on February 12th). Best of all, the arena was near capacity, fans almost entirely dressed in white, cheers raining down from the upper deck. It felt a lot like 2009, or at least a lot like 2019.

The Tigers won the game, and it was never close. Said senior guard Alex Lomax after his team had secured a program-record 13th win in the American Athletic Conference, “The crowd is like a sixth man, and some teams can’t handle it.” A Memphis team that would have been described as maligned — at best — a dozen games ago, completed its regular season with a record of 19-9, having won 10 of its last 11 contests. Regardless of what happens at this week’s AAC tournament in Fort Worth, Memphis should end an eight-year drought with a return to the NCAA tournament, where big-time college basketball is played for three glorious weekends.

“I feel blessed,” said Memphis coach Penny Hardaway, a man who appeared in the NCAA tournament twice as a Tiger player but seeks his first dance ticket in his fourth year at the helm of the program. “To showcase who we are against one of the best teams in the country, to the entire nation … It’s a great day to be a Tiger. The guys came together at the right time. I call it spiritual momentum. An understanding of where we want to be, leaving egos at the door, and the entire building coming together as one.”

With the postseason here, the Tigers’ first order of business is the AAC tourney, where they’ll open with a quarterfinal game Friday night. The Tigers have only reached the AAC final once (they lost in 2016), and they’ll likely have to face nemesis SMU in the semifinals. But the two wins over Houston and the upset of 6th-ranked Alabama in December should be enough for Memphis to play on even if it comes up short in Texas. 

Three proverbial “intangibles” to consider for a lengthy Tiger march toward glory:

• Health. Landers Nolley, DeAndre Williams, Jalen Duren, and Alex Lomax each missed multiple games with injuries this season. All four players are now healthy, and the same goes for the other five members of Hardaway’s rotation. It’s no coincidence that winning ways were discovered when players emerged from the trainer’s room. Nolley himself has said, “it’s on us” if the Tigers fall short this month. No excuses, least of all injuries.

• Experience. The Tigers have no NCAA tournament experience, but this is a veteran bunch. Lomax and Harris are playing as seniors and Williams is 25 years old, for crying out loud. (For some perspective, Williams is three years older than Ja Morant.) Junior guard Lester Quinones has started 76 games in a Tiger uniform. Perhaps most significantly, each of these players knows how hard it is to reach the NCAA tournament. Nary a minute of playing time will be taken for granted, should Memphis make the field of 68. And pressure? These young men have spent their college days trying to live up to Memphis Tigers history (including that of their head coach), and under pandemic conditions. The lights will not be too bright for them.

• Confidence. Lomax, Harris, and Nolley appeared together for the postgame press conference after Sunday’s win over the Cougars. And what sticks with me from their appearance are the smiles. The levity. The joy from finishing the regular season on a high, and all the hopes for postseason success that kind of high delivers. There’s so much yet to gain for the University of Memphis program in 2022, but there’s also some big-time college basketball yet to be played.

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Sports Tiger Blue

Tigers’ Alpha Emerges (Finally!)

Jalen Duren (photo by Larry Kuzniewski)

We learned in their upset of 6th-ranked Houston on February 12th that the Memphis Tigers have a “Big Three”: Landers Nolley, DeAndre Williams, and Jalen Duren. In the four games since that season-turning victory, we’ve learned which player, among those three, is this team’s Alpha. It’s freshman center Jalen Duren, by a head and two large shoulders. With March basketball upon us, it’s about time for this clarification.

Since returning from a hand injury on February 5th, Duren has averaged 14.6 points and 7.6 rebounds over seven games (six of them Memphis victories). He scored at least 11 points in all seven games and put up double-doubles in consecutive wins over UCF, Tulane, and Houston. He may have joined the Memphis program as merely one of two top-five recruits (along with Emoni Bates), but Duren alone has risen to the college game in much the same way Precious Achiuwa did two seasons ago on his way to Player of the Year honors in the American Athletic Conference. Currently the AAC’s leader in both rebounds and blocked shots, Duren is a lock for first-team all-conference accolades, if not the same hardware Achiuwa landed.

The Pennsylvania native may be only 18 years old, but he stands 6’11” and weighs 250 pounds, very little of that weight so much as approximating flab. And size, friends, does not slump. These are assets Duren will enjoy as long as he plays a sport with a goal ten feet above the floor. Add his quickness, a shooting touch from beyond 10 feet, and a healthy dose of “want to” — Duren will hit the floor after a loose ball — and you see how the Tigers’ Alpha is projected among the top 15 players in June’s NBA draft. (He turns 19 in November, making him eligible for this year’s draft.)

Duren had what might be considered, for him, an off day in the Tigers’ beat-down of Wichita State Sunday: merely 13 points and seven rebounds. But he altered one Shocker shot after another, the kind of defensive presence that can’t be measured in the box score. (He did get credit for three blocks.) Following the game, I asked Tiger coach Penny Hardaway if Duren reminded him of any teammate or opponent from Hardaway’s playing career.

“Jalen reminds me of Chris Webber,” said Hardaway. “He has the same mannerisms. [Assistant Coach] Rasheed [Wallace] and I talked about that. They have similarities.”

If you know your basketball history, Hardaway’s comparison is poignant. Webber and Hardaway were both consensus All-Americans in 1992-93 (Webber with Michigan, Hardaway with Memphis State). The Orlando Magic chose Webber with the first pick in the 1993 NBA draft, only to trade him minutes later to Golden State for the Warriors’ selection at number-three: Penny Hardaway. Webber was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last year, while Hardaway still awaits the game’s highest honor. You can be sure the Tigers’ coach knows Webber’s game almost as well as his own. And he sees that game — that kind of impact — in Jalen Duren.

The last time the Memphis program reached the second weekend of the NCAA tournament, in 2009, the Tigers’ had a distinctive Alpha on the roster: Tyreke Evans. If there was a shortcoming for the teams that made the Dance four straight years (2011-14) under coach Josh Pastner, it was the lack of an Alpha star. Was it Will Barton? (Maybe his sophomore season.) D.J. Stephens? Joe Jackson? Those were multi-talented teams, and they should be credited for making the NCAAs when so many Tiger teams fell short in the eight years since. But the one player — the Alpha — capable of shouldering a deep tournament run? I’m not convinced Pastner ever had the asset Hardaway does right now in Jalen Duren.

After Sunday’s win, Landers Nolley — a “Big Three” member himself — said, “We’re in control of our own destiny. If we lose, it’s on us.” His team’s Alpha may be only 18, and he may have one eye already on a promising NBA career. But if the 2021-22 Tigers are to reach the heights they envision, it’s on no player more than Jalen Duren. Based on his play in February, that may be a comfortable load.

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Sports Tiger Blue

New Season for the Memphis Tigers

Landers Nolley II (photo by Larry Kuzniewski)

Rarely does a single game change a college basketball season, much less one played in mid-February. But this may well have happened last Saturday, when the Memphis Tigers upset the 6th-ranked Houston Cougars in Texas. In ending Houston’s 37-game(!) winning streak at the Fertitta Center, Memphis earned its first road win over a top-10 team in 17 years and its second over the country’s 6th-ranked team this season. (Alabama occupied that ranking when the Tigers beat them at FedExForum in December.) For a program that hadn’t beaten a top-10 team since 2014, the 2021-22 campaign has gained a measure of significance, but a return to the NCAA tournament remains the goal. Getting there would end an eight-year drought and change the trajectory of Penny Hardaway’s still-young college coaching career. The Tigers took a significant stride toward a Big Dance ticket by beating Houston.

Three truths we discovered in Saturday’s win:

• The Tigers have a “Big Three.” NBA championships tend to be won by teams with headline trios. Think recently of the Miami Heat (LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh) or the Golden State Warriors (Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, and Klay Thompson). The Tigers’ victory at Houston established the team’s prime players, once and for all, as Landers Nolley, DeAndre Williams, and Jalen Duren. After missing four recent games with a knee injury, Nolley returned to the starting lineup for the first time since late December and led Memphis with 20 points, hitting four of five three-point attempts. (It’s a good time to remember Nolley was a first-team all-conference selection after the 2020-21 season.) After missing six recent games with a back injury, Williams looked healthy against Houston, scoring 13 points with four assists and three steals. Then there’s Duren, the team’s star freshman and the American Athletic Conference’s top rebounder and shot-blocker. Duren had 14 points and 11 rebounds against the Cougars, his third consecutive double-double.

• For the Tigers’ rotation, tight makes right. Hardaway sent 11 players to the floor in the first half against Houston. (The Cougars led by three points at halftime.) But over the game’s final 20 minutes, he stuck with his starting unit: the big three, plus Alex Lomax and Lester Quinones. Among reserves, only senior Tyler Harris played as many as 11 minutes. Depth is overrated in college basketball. There are four media timeouts every half. Players get “breathers” every time someone takes a free throw. Hardaway has finally landed on the starting five that appears capable of winning big games in March. It’s the players’ responsibility to avoid foul trouble and the coach’s responsibility to play them every minute he can.

• Free throws win games. Memphis fans didn’t need Saturday’s win to learn this lesson. It was delivered like a kick in the crotch near the end of the 2008 NCAA championship. Memphis teams have not been known for hitting free throws consistently, or in big moments. This year’s squad entered the Houston game shooting 66 percent from the foul line . . . 321st in the country. (Houston was 320th.) When Williams was fouled on a heave as the shot-clock expired with 1:35 left in Saturday’s game, the Tigers led by only three points (56-53). Williams made his three free throws, and the Tigers, as a team, connected on 10 more — without a miss — over the game’s final 90 seconds to make the final score (69-59) look like an easy victory. They’re called “free” for a reason. 

Much remains to be gained in a season suddenly captivating for longtime Tiger fans. A pair of road games this week — at Cincinnati Tuesday and at SMU Sunday — could go either way, and a pair of losses would toss Memphis back on the infamous “bubble” when it comes to NCAA tournament consideration. But a pair of wins, then strong showings at home to end the regular season could make the AAC tournament not so critical for the Tigers’ chances at an at-large berth. A mercurial team has won five games in a row. And on a special Saturday afternoon in Houston, that team raised its ceiling for achievement considerably.

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Sports Tiger Blue

Penny’s Perspective

Penny Hardaway (photo by Larry Kuzniewski)

Embarrassing.

That was the trigger word. Last Thursday, a reporter asked Penny Hardaway if he was embarrassed after his Memphis Tigers’ latest disappointment, an eight-point loss to SMU that left the team — once ranked 9th in the country — 9-8 for the season. The fourth-year basketball coach forgot about the lights, cameras, and recorders, and let it be known how he felt.

“Stop asking me stupid f*****g questions about if I feel like I can do something. … I’m coaching really hard, my boys are playing really hard. I’m not embarrassed about nothing.”

It was hard to witness, knowing Hardaway’s stature in this town. Since taking the job in March 2018, Hardaway has brought dignity and composure to almost every public appearance. He’s been angry, frustrated, impatient. His teams, to date, have under-performed. But he’s kept himself together under a spotlight no other Memphian would welcome. That composure cracked last Thursday. [Hardaway apologized via Instagram on Friday, at least “to my school, to the players and to our fans.” No mention of “this media” that stirred him so the night before.]

Consider the word embarrassing and its association to Hardaway in the context of basketball. This is a man who, as a player, performed in the NBA Finals, All-Star games, the Olympics. Rarely was he embarrassed in sneakers and shorts on a basketball court. He took up coaching a decade ago and did nothing but win at the middle school and high school levels. There was nothing embarrassing about winning three state championships at East High School. (The James Wiseman controversy surfaced later. Depending on your view, that qualifies as embarrassing for either Hardaway or the NCAA.)

A revealing detail about Hardaway’s angry reaction to the “embarrassing” question: It came after he said this: “Right now, we aren’t fighting hard enough. This isn’t a Memphis team.” This isn’t a Memphis team. Those five words are the equivalent of … embarrassment. One standard (Hardaway’s personal success, now connected to the historical success of the Memphis program) exceeds the current standard, enough for the coach to disassociate his current players with the very brand (the University of Memphis) they represent. If Hardaway isn’t embarrassed, he wouldn’t want to acknowledge the other emotion his comments suggest: shame. “My boys are playing really hard” … but against SMU, at least, they aren’t a Memphis team?

A Memphis team showed up at Tulsa Sunday, the Tigers erasing a 13-point halftime deficit to win their first game on the Golden Hurricane’s floor since 2012. Memphis played shorthanded again, with DeAndre Williams, Landers Nolley, and Jalen Duren all nursing injuries. Star turns from Tyler Harris and Josh Minott off the bench were enough to beat the American Athletic Conference’s cellar dweller. Hardaway could, metaphorically speaking, catch his breath and say all the right things about a road victory.

The coach’s job will likely grow heavier, because the current team (now 10-8 and 4-4 in the AAC) is a long shot for the NCAA tournament. Missing the Big Dance would make it eight years in a row, half of those on Hardaway’s watch. His comments last Thursday night were Hardaway’s first confession that he understands and feels the pressure of history on his beloved alma mater. It was the rare chance for those who watch, analyze, and discuss a hometown hero to see and hear what that hometown hero thinks from his own perspective. 

Athletes — and coaches — are rarely their best in front of cameras after a loss. Penny Hardaway will surely have better moments (and better press conferences) in the days to come. The best athletes are able to forget poor outings and regain peak performance. An embarrassing press conference? Coaches and communities as attached as Hardaway and Memphis forget those, too.

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Sports Tiger Blue

When the “Smoke” Clears

Emoni Bates (Photo by Larry Kuzniewski)

It appears the 2021-22 Memphis Tigers will leave their mark on the history books. Or maybe we should call it a scar. Unless they manage to win the American Athletic Conference tournament in March — and thus qualify for the program’s first NCAA tournament in eight years — these Tigers will lead conversations about the most disappointing teams in U of M history. A team that opened the season ranked 12th in the AP poll — and many felt that position wasn’t high enough — is currently 9-7 and nowhere near the Top 25. Worse, the Tigers are merely 3-3 in the AAC (despite wins over Wichita State and Cincinnati). Six AAC teams have fewer league losses, with Houston (4-0) at the top of the standings.

The Tigers’ latest face-plant occurred last Saturday at East Carolina, when Memphis blew a 10-point lead over the game’s final three minutes and lost by a single point on a buzzer-beater. The game came down to the Tigers defending an in-bounds play with a single second left on the clock. They didn’t. The ECU crowd stormed the court and the Tigers flew home, tail firmly tucked between their legs. Again.

These Tigers rarely play at full strength. Covid protocols and injuries have reduced coach Penny Hardaway’s once-too-deep roster to as few as six or seven scholarship players at times. Perhaps the Tigers beat the Pirates last weekend if DeAndre Williams and Landers Nolley had played. Surely they beat Tulane on December 29th had Williams and freshman sensation Emoni Bates not been sidelined. (They lost by a single point.)

But the limited roster isn’t an excuse, not as measured over the course of a full season. The Tigers faced Georgia with the Bulldogs down their top guard. The Bulldogs won the game. Good teams adjust their tactics and find ways to win. Even bad teams, like Georgia, must do this now and then. The first and most important skill in sports is being available. Staying healthy. Suiting up on game day. Players unable to perform when the lights glow should not be considered championship caliber.

How are we to measure Hardaway at this point? Since he took the job in March 2018, the best skill Hardaway and his players have displayed is swagger. He and they want “all the smoke.” It became a social-media rallying cry, a mantra of sorts for a program emerging from the lost chances of his predecessors, Josh Pastner and Tubby Smith. Pastner led the Tigers to the NCAA tournament four years in a row. But he was skewered for not doing more with the rosters he loaded with prime talent. Smith spent two awkward winters in Memphis, winning more games than he lost, but with junior college transfers leading the way. Penny Hardaway would erase all that disappointment. He would bring “pros” to Memphis, as John Calipari did for a glorious four-year run of late-March basketball. But swagger without results is merely posturing.

There’s one more disturbing variable to this season’s mess (so far): the Larry Brown factor. The Hall of Fame coach joined Hardaway’s staff as somewhat of a Yoda to Hardaway’s Luke Skywalker. He would bring wisdom and the attention to important details — be it development of players or in-game strategy — that should make Hardaway the best Division I coach he could be. Well, if Brown has been a positive factor, it means the Tigers would be worse than 9-7 without him. This is not math Penny Hardaway wants to calculate in quiet moments.

There are 12 regular-season games to play. Maybe DeAndre Williams is the difference, and when (if?) he returns, the Tigers will find a groove. Seven of those games are at FedExForum, where Memphis has secured big wins over 6th-ranked Alabama and Cincinnati. Should the Tigers go 10-2 the rest of the way, would a 19-9 record attract an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament? I wouldn’t bet on it, not with those losses at Tulane and East Carolina (and UCF). Hardaway, Brown and friends must treat the next six weeks like training for the AAC tournament (March 10-13 in Fort Worth). Hardaway has seen an under-performing group rally to win a tournament in Texas (the 2021 NIT). Why not win another one in 2022?