Penny Hardaway’s seventh season as coach of the Memphis Tigers began with a bang(!) Monday in Maui. A roster that’s all but entirely new battled the second-ranked Connecticut Huskies into overtime and, thanks to nine points (six free throws) from someone named P.J. Carter, upset the two-time defending national champions, 99-97. Wait, you say, Memphis entered the game with four wins in four games. Began?
The nature of college basketball in 2024 is, in a word, flux. Players come and go with the frequency of fickle middle-school crushes. Last year’s Tiger star, David Jones, played one season in blue and gray (and won the American Athletic Conference scoring title). The Tigers’ star in 2022-23, Kendric Davis, played one season in blue and gray (and won the American Athletic Conference scoring title). These were veteran players that Hardaway essentially borrowed for a one-winter run. Cutting to the present, the 2024-25 Tigers are measuring the star power of their new roster, knowing full well most of the players we see in uniform in Maui will not be here twelve months from now. And those first four games didn’t tell us much, other than this group plays better after halftime than before.
Then came the opening game of the Maui Invitational. A team that struggled after the tip in its first four contests hit 56 percent of its shots (and five of ten three-point attempts) in going toe to toe with the mighty Huskies, the score knotted, 40 each, at halftime. Those twenty minutes would have been a win for Memphis, coming so early in the season against such a formidable foe. But the Tigers played even better (that developing trend) after the break. They again hit five of ten long-distance shots, matched UConn in rebounding, and led by 13 points with under five minutes to play. But the Huskies played like the champions they are, tying the game on a nothing-but-net three-pointer by Solo Ball with a second left on the clock. Those 40 minutes would have been a win for Memphis.
But the Tigers played even better in overtime, and without their primary scoring threat, P.J. Haggerty, who fouled out late in regulation. Enter P.J. Carter. The Atlanta native is playing his fifth college season. He spent two years at Campbell University (4.3 minutes per game), a year at Georgia Highlands College, and last season at UTSA, where he started 10 games and averaged 9.5 points per game. With six clutch free throws and a three pointer in the overtime period on Monday, Carter is now a Memphis Tiger for life. That’s how big the Tigers’ Hawaiian punch felt at the final buzzer.
Hardaway needs this team to get to the NCAA tournament . . . and win a couple of games in the Big Dance. Year Seven is long enough to wait for the hometown legend to return some glory to a long-proud program. Honestly, Hardaway has produced more national controversies as coach of the Tigers than he has NCAA tournament victories (one). And this is why the upset of UConn felt like a beginning. (For some perspective, the last time Memphis beat the second-ranked team in the country was an upset of Louisville at the Mid-South Coliseum on March 2, 1972, four months before Hardaway’s first birthday.) A team most of us didn’t know two weeks ago now has familiar faces (Tyrese Hunter!) who seem capable of beating, yes, anybody in the country.
It would be nice if Memphis beats Michigan State on Tuesday and goes on to win the Maui Invitational. But even with a loss to the Spartans, the 2024-25 Tigers have created a permanent memory: Remember Maui! That is exceedingly hard in modern college basketball, and next to impossible without a lengthy tournament run in March. A new season, a new roster, and, it appears, a new life for coach Penny Hardaway. Many journey to the islands to make a dream come true. Perhaps these Tigers’ truth is creating new dreams.
