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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

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.