Tag: Penny Hardaway

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From My Seat Sports

Penny Saved

Penny Hardaway (Brandon Dill)

Exhale, Memphis.

It appears there will be a Year Four of the Penny Hardaway Era 2.0 at the University of Memphis. After exchanging winks with the NBA’s Orlando Magic last month, the living face of Tiger basketball retains his office at the Laurie-Walton Family Basketball Center on Getwell. As a statue of Larry Finch is literally rising outside that facility, Hardaway continues his quest to return a long-proud program to a place where far more than an NIT championship will be celebrated.

How close did Hardaway come to leaving? When an interview is part of the equation, that’s close enough for Tiger fans, boosters, and sponsors. Enough to raise blood pressure, even as the Mid-South summer seems to slow movement of any kind to a lazy crawl. Hardaway had some very special seasons as a player with Orlando — he was twice named first-team All-NBA and helped the Magic to the 1995 Finals — so a fit exists, even if it crosses a couple of basketball generations. Having never coached a game in the NCAA tournament, Hardaway’s credentials for an NBA job — on paper — may seem thin. But he would sell tickets and sponsorships in Florida just as he has here in Memphis.

Some have insisted Tiger basketball would be fine had Hardaway left. It’s an institution, larger than any individual, larger even than The Guy. Finch himself received a pink slip (after 11 seasons as head coach) on the concourse of The Pyramid. Legends expire, particularly in a time where patience is nonexistent, where popularity is today’s Twitter trend, where a game-changing recruiting class spends no more than a season together. Had Hardaway left, well, next man up.

I’m not sure that would be the scenario here in Memphis, not with a premature farewell from Penny Hardaway. Think about how much Hardaway loves University of Memphis basketball, how much he adores his hometown. He could live anywhere in the world he chooses, but has kept a home in the Bluff City. When he was named head coach in 2018, there was a “finally!” feeling at the Laurie-Walton press conference but, more generally, throughout the city. We had Our Guy, and Our Guy had embraced us. If he had left after only three seasons, and with nothing to show but that NIT hardware? Over the course of a lifetime, you’ll have people give up on you, or seek greener pastures. And you move on. But when that perfect match — you know it’s perfect — proclaims things aren’t right? That kind of cut leaves a scar.

So exhale, Memphis. And back to work for Penny Hardaway. Instead of trying to rebuild the Magic (Orlando finished 14th among 15 Eastern Conference teams last season), Hardaway will study his own revamped roster — bye-bye Boogie Ellis and D.J. Jeffries, hello Johnathan and Chandler Lawson — and plot a course toward the Tiger program’s first Big Dance since, gulp, 2014. Instead of chasing the Milwaukee Bucks, Atlanta Hawks, and Philadelphis 76ers, Hardaway must close the gap with the University of Houston. (The Cougars reached the 2021 Final Four, remember.) That’s Penny’s challenge, really, in summation. Do for Memphis what Kelvin Sampson has done in east Texas. And frankly, it’s a lower hurdle to leap than the one (the many) he’d face in the NBA.

Penny Hardaway is still Our Guy. As he reaches a life milestone — Hardaway turns 50 on July 18th — the “kid” from Binghampton remains the personification of all that is wonderful about Tiger basketball. Temptations are part of the mix for a man with Hardaway’s profile. But making the right relationship work brings rewards of a rare and distinctive kind. There’s reason to believe University of Memphis basketball is getting closer to such a prize.

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From My Seat Sports Sports Feature

Transfer Nation

Penny Hardaway (U of M Athletics / Joe Murphy)

Let’s be glad there’s no such thing as an NIT championship parade. How awkward would that have been? Before Penny Hardaway’s Memphis Tigers could deliver their 2021 trophy to the Laurie-Walton Family Basketball Center, nearly half of Hardaway’s nine-man rotation announced their intentions to leave the program. Sophomores Boogie Ellis, D.J. Jeffries, and Damion Baugh will transfer and freshman Moussa Cisse is dipping his toes into the NBA draft waters, though not hiring an agent just yet. Even one of Hardaway’s two four-star recruits for next season — Jordan Nesbitt — departed for Saint Louis University after enrolling at the U of M for the spring semester. Exhale. And deep breaths. The 2020-21 Tiger season is over . . . and so is that team, with an exclamation point.

Such is life in college basketball today. Forget the players; teams themselves are one-and-done. All of them. Something we’ve come to know as the transfer portal has created all-but-unfettered free agency in the sport, with more than 1,000 players “entering the portal” this offseason. And yes, two of those players — swingmen Davion Warren and Earl Timberlake — are already headed to Memphis. So if you’re doing the math, Memphis has subtracted five players (should Cisse actually enter the NBA draft) and added two for year four of the Coach Penny era.

There’s no need for grinding teeth or screaming into the Twitterverse over the roster volatility. The NCAA has, for generations, exploited talented athletes for financial gain, most glaringly the “March Madness” telethon each spring that crowns basketball’s champion. If we’ve reached the point where players can at least choose — without penalty — their program(s) of choice after actually experiencing life as a cash cow, it’s a better, more honest world. Makes the job of a coach and his recruiting staff a fiery gauntlet, but hey, that’s why they’re paid the big bucks.

• Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game would have been a nice look in Atlanta this summer. Scheduled to be played six months after the great Hank Aaron’s passing, the Midsummer Classic would have made for an uplifting salute to an American legend and a warm welcome-back as vaccinations allow more and more fans to actually enter stadiums. And considering Georgia voters changed the legislative branch of our government by sending two Democrats to the U.S. Senate, the showcase sporting event might have been seen as a “thank you” from an under-represented segment of our population. Aaron would have appreciated that.

Alas, the All-Star Game will not be going down to Georgia. With those new Senators still decorating their offices, the Peach State’s legislature enacted bills that serve as restrictions on voting. (Don’t you dare provide a voter a bottle of water!) So MLB yanked the All-Star Game and will stage the event in Denver. The decision was made quickly by commissioner Rob Manfred, but surely with loud whispers in his ears from corporate sponsors not thrilled about pouring millions of dollars into a state so bold-faced in its anti-democratic legislation.

Get used to this. The most powerful force in the United States of America is money. No man or woman, no voice or column, no march or protest will get things done in this country like the mighty dollar. It’s the one variable that can swing, yes, legislation. Piss off the “liberal media,” that’s fine. Only so many ears (and wallets) CNN (an Atlanta company!) can reach. But find yourself on the wrong side of the table from Coca-Cola (an Atlanta company!) or Budweiser, with millions of baseball fans in the mix? Those campaign donations will drop like a batter with a fastball to the chin.

No one wants politics mixed with their sports entertainment. But sports entertainment breathes the oxygen of American business. The mix has already been made. Major League Baseball simply used its All-Star Game as the most recent — sorry for this — hammer for change.

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Sports Tiger Blue

Tiger Hoops: 2020-21 Season Review

CREDIT: U of M Athletics / Joe Murphy

Having missed out on a berth in the NCAA tournament, the Memphis Tigers will join 15 other teams for a version of the National Invitation Tournament. All games will be played at a pair of arenas in metro Dallas.

It wasn’t supposed to go like this. When Penny Hardaway met a throng of boosters and media at the brand-new Laurie-Walton Center on March 20, 2018, he did not mention a four-year plan. There was no three-year runway toward contention for championships, be they conference or, ahem, national. “People are telling me to be patient,” said Hardaway three years ago. “But I’m not built that way. I’m not wired that way. I’ll go for it all or none at all.”

These are wacky times, and that goes well beyond the world of college basketball. But the history books will note that Hardaway — a certifiable hardwood legend in these parts — is the first Tiger coach to end three consecutive seasons without an NCAA tournament appearance since Wayne Yates, way back in the late 1970s (1977-79 to be exact). Sure, a pandemic is in the mix. There was no NCAA tournament in 2020. (Hardaway’s second team would not have made the Big Dance, not without winning the American Athletic Conference tournament, which was also cancelled.) But three years without March Madness in Memphis, Tennessee? On top of the four Madness-free years that preceded Hardaway’s arrival? It’s the longest drought for this proud program since a ten-year dry spell that ended with the Final Four run of 1973. Ouch.
U of M Athletics / Joe Murphy

All-conference swingman Landers Nolley II.

The Tigers played the Houston Cougars — the number-two seed in the NCAA tournament’s Midwest quadrant — to the buzzer twice in the span of six days this month. The notion that a tournament bracket can be filled with 68 better teams is ludicrous. But it’s never about what your team did when your “bubble” status bursts. It’s what your team didn’t do.

The Tigers didn’t beat a “Quad 1” team this season, a team from the upper tier of overall rankings as determined by strength of schedule and location of games. This is problematic for a team that doesn’t play in a “Power 5” league in a season the AAC didn’t exactly stuff the Top-25 rankings. Memphis only had two Power-5 opponents on its schedule. The Ole Miss game was cancelled due to positive COVID results in the Rebel program, and the Tigers lost to Auburn.

The Tigers didn’t get to play eight games — eight games — because of the pandemic. Four were cancelled because of positive tests in their opponent’s camp and four were cancelled because of positive tests in the Memphis program (including games against both AAC tournament finalists, home games with Cincinnati and Houston). Five or six more wins would have added some shine to the Tigers’ 16-8 record. Based on what we saw in Texas (twice), a win over the Cougars at FedExForum would not be a stretch. A second win over Wichita State (Memphis beat the AAC regular-season champs by 20 points in January) would have captured the right kind of attention.

Consider Boogie Ellis the personification of the Tigers’ near-miss this season. The sophomore guard tied the first Houston game with a three-pointer inside the game’s final 10 seconds, only to watch the Cougars’ Tramon Mark heave in a bank shot from 30 feet as time expired. Last Saturday, Ellis scored 27 points, his long-distance marksmanship fueling the Tigers’ second-half comeback from 12 points down. But Ellis missed six of ten free throws, vanishing points that could have made the difference in another game decided in the final minute of play.

“It’s hard to accept,” said a disconsolate Hardaway after the AAC semifinal loss. “Having the game won, knowing what’s at stake, and not being able to pull it through. We had a chance to knock them out a few times, and just couldn’t.” Hardaway acknowledged an uneven start to his team’s season, one that didn’t include transfer DeAndre Williams for the first seven games (the Tigers went 4-3 without him). “We started off very slow,” he said. “Just couldn’t get our footing. And it took us a long time to come together as a team. When we got our rhythm, we had the COVID pause, but we came out of that playing really well. We were locked and loaded for this tournament. It’s heartbreaking.”

Heartbreak inevitably turns to hope over the course of a long offseason. And there’s reason for optimism in the Tiger program. The team’s entire nine-man rotation could return for the 2021-22 campaign. As you’re sketching lineups, though, keep in mind that the transfer portal has brought an element of free agency to college basketball. Remember Tyler Harris? Lance Thomas? Where would this year’s team have been without Williams (the team’s most impactful player, from Evansville) or Landers Nolley (an all-conference honoree, from Virginia Tech)? Subtraction and addition are larger equations now, particularly in a sport where merely one or two solutions (at the right positions) can transform a team.

From Hardaway’s heralded 2019 recruiting class, Boogie Ellis and Lester Quinones have established themselves as 30-minute guards on game nights. D.J. Jeffries didn’t take the same strides forward as a sophomore, but could be a game-changer if he can score consistently. Malcolm Dandridge improved both his body and game in his second year at the college level, and Damion Baugh is a capable ball-handler off the bench if Hardaway chooses to attack with a smaller unit. With Moussa Cisse manning the middle — the AAC’s Freshman of the Year — the Tigers have a defensive eraser and, at times, an offensive threat to feed the ball. Assuming Alex Lomax fully recovers from the ankle injury that sidelined him this month, next year’s Tigers will have senior leadership in the form of a player Hardaway has groomed since middle school.
U of M Athletics / Joe Murphy

Moussa Cisse, the AAC’s Freshman of the Year.

To all the veterans, you can add the country’s 6th-ranked recruiting class (according to 247 Sports), led by a pair of four-star prospects: Jordan Nesbitt (a scoring wing from St. Louis, already with the program) and Josh Minott (a small forward from Boca Raton, Florida, who will push Jeffries for playing time). Among Hardaway’s concerns as he enters his fourth year at the helm, depth of talent isn’t one. Can as many as 11 strong players mesh as a unit, though, and sacrifice (minutes played) enough to get this program back where so many feel it belongs?

Should you have concerns about the Tiger program — seven years — don’t let the coach’s motivation be one. Shortly after he was hired in 2018, Hardaway shared some perspective on how very much he, personally, wants to win a championship — the national kind — with his alma mater. This is a man, remember, who did not win a title as a player at the high school, college, or pro level. He does, though, own an Olympic gold medal (won in 1996). “That gold medal was something we were supposed to do,” said Hardaway in 2018. “We had the best players in the world playing for one team. We’ve [now] got to do what’s not expected. They’re not expecting us to win a national championship here.”

The best advice from parents far and wide: No one should challenge you more than you challenge yourself. Every member of the Memphis Tigers’ roster and coaching staff is coming to grips with that philosophy by one measure or another. Go ahead and win the NIT. It wouldn’t hurt. Then count the days ’til November and another chance for a proud program to fully regain its footing on the national stage.

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Sports Tiger Blue

Tiger Truths

CREDIT: Memphis Athletics / Joe Murphy

You can learn a lot about a basketball team with four games in eight days. The Tigers finished January by winning three of those four games, and they displayed a few factors that will impact the remainder of the season.

Whither D.J. Jeffries? The sophomore forward from Olive Branch was a preseason second-team all-conference selection. It now seems he can’t crack the Tigers’ starting lineup. In the blowout wins over Wichita State and East Carolina, Jeffries scored a total of 13 points (and took 14 shots). He played well in the win over SMU at FedExForum (12 points off the bench; 5 of 7 from the field), but disappeared in the rematch at Dallas (a single point in 15 minutes on the floor), a game Memphis lost by two points. For now, Jeffries is this team’s enigma. He seems to have had some thunder stolen by transfers Landers Nolley and DeAndre Williams. For the Tigers to be their best in February, Jeffries must join the party.
Memphis Athletics / Joe Murphy

Penny Hardaway


Willpower is there, at least in bursts. Eight minutes into the first game against SMU, the Tigers were beaten. Down eight points, they looked to be facing a rarity: a more athletic group of basketball players. But a 17-2 run seized the lead at halftime and Memphis traded punches with the Mustangs over the final 20 minutes and earned the win. They utilized a run of precisely the same margin (17-2) to get back into the game at SMU two days later. They had a late lead. They had a chance to force overtime with free throws. It didn’t work out. But the fight was there. This is an important variable, especially with crowds still nonexistent for home games. The only way this team makes the NCAA tournament is by winning a few games in February that they shouldn’t. That will require teeth as much as talent.

The Tigers can shoot from distance. Memphis hit at least 10 three-pointers in the wins over Wichita State, East Carolina, and SMU. They hadn’t hit so many in any of their previous 11 games. Seven Tigers found the net from long range in the win over the Pirates. Not an especially strong opponent, but that kind of collective shooting is hard to beat. The beauty in this, of course, is that it’s hard for seven players to slump at the same time. Tiger coach Penny Hardaway needs to adjust his rotation to accommodate shooters who are on target, and this will surely change from one game to the next. The Tigers even hit nine treys in the loss to SMU. Add a 10th and that two-point loss is a fourth straight win. Follow this stat line the rest of the season.

This team’s “identity” is defense. It’s an overused descriptor for a group of athletes tasked with winning games and chasing championships: What’s their identity? Just as individual players have several layers to what they bring on game night, so does a team. Those layers are peeled back depending on the opponent, location, injuries, time of year. In other words, a team’s “identity” changes as a season unfolds. But these Memphis Tigers will go as far as their defense takes them. SMU guard Kendric Davis is a leading candidate for American Athletic Conference Player of the Year. In two games against the Tigers last week, Davis missed 21 of his 27 shots and committed nine turnovers. The Tigers rank 26th in the country in points allowed (62.9 through the second SMU game). They rank 13th in field-goal percentage defense (39 percent). They beat teams by stopping teams, an asset Hardaway has sought since taking the job.

Boogie is better than he’s been. It was hard seeing Boogie Ellis miss that second free throw in the final seconds of the loss at SMU. Because Ellis is the one Tiger most in need of finding his role for this team. Remember his 24 points in the season-opening win over St. Mary’s? He hasn’t put up as many as 15 in a game since. This is a scorer, one originally committed to, ahem, Duke. Ellis needs a confidence-booster, to be sure. Hardaway must find the right place and time to bring Boogie back.

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From My Seat Sports

Of Dreams and Ja

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

The Memphis Grizzlies’ annual Martin Luther King Day game is the most important sporting event in this city. It provides Memphis — and not just our beloved NBA franchise — a national platform, one from which the powerful and inspiring work of the National Civil Rights Museum (NCRM) is on full display. It’s the rare sporting event that feels bigger. Because it is.
Larry Kuzniewski

Ja Morant

And this year’s game felt especially right, even with FedExForum empty of fans, even with pandemic conditions still heavy worldwide, even with our nation’s capital becoming, yes, a fortress for the upcoming inauguration of our 46th president. In the game’s closing seconds, a dynamic Black player (Ja Morant) found a sharp-shooting white teammate (Grayson Allen) who buried a game-winning three-pointer to beat one of the league’s best young teams. If you looked west shortly before Allen’s game-winner, you saw the new year’s most beautiful sunset, a lovely metaphor for the Grizzlies’ comeback victory against, of course, the Phoenix Suns. It felt . . . just right.

The TNT studio hosts were especially sentimental, Kenny Smith being one of this year’s three NCRM Sports Legacy Honorees. A two-time NBA champion (as a Houston Rocket), Smith and his more-provocative colleague — Hall of Famer Charles Barkley — were effusive in their gratitude for the platform the NBA has provided them, as Black men, to speak about topics more important than James Harden taking his talents to Brooklyn. Best of all, Smith, Barkley, and friends see what is rising in Memphis (on the hardwood): Morant, one of the league’s top two or three players under the age of 25, and Jaren Jackson Jr. — a future All-Star himself — soon to return from knee surgery. The Grizzlies keep Memphis proud, one year to the next, but particularly on MLK Day. I’m choosing to see their win this week as an omen for a year we all rise, as Memphians and as human beings.

• Memphis Tiger coach Penny Hardaway is a past recipient of the NCRM Sports Legacy Award. That was an especially happy day at FedExForum, a packed crowd — it was 2018 — saluting a past hero, one already rumored to be returning to the college program where he played a generation ago. Hardaway is surely calling on days like that right now, as his current Tiger team tries to find its way through a season already damaged by COVID-19 (three January games postponed) and the Tulsa Golden Hurricane (two losses after the Tigers led at halftime). Now 6-5, the Tigers face four games in eight days before the calendar turns to February. And a coach with top-five aspirations for his program now must wonder if 20 wins are within reach, let alone an NCAA tournament bid. Hardaway was philosophical last week during a virtual press conference, identifying the same cloud the rest of us do these days when things turn sour: “We’re trying to play through a pandemic. It’s not the worst thing. We have to be mindful, continue to be safe. You just have to work through the rigors of what’s happening.”

• I’ve written in this space about Tom Brady being the first one-man dynasty in the history of American team sports. The 43-year-old quarterback has now proven that a New England Patriots uniform wasn’t required for this “dynasty” to happen, having led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the NFC Championship in his first season with the franchise. The game will be Brady’s 14th(!) conference title game. Perspective? You’ve heard of Joe Montana, John Elway, and Dan Marino. That trio played in 16 conference championships combined.

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Sports Tiger Blue

Who Are These Memphis Tigers?

CREDIT: Joe Murphy

Ten games into a bizarre, rhythm-free basketball season, the Memphis Tigers have raised as many questions as they’ve answered. Here are four, with attempts at defogging the view.

Who is the Tigers’ Alpha?
In Penny Hardaway’s first year as head coach, Jeremiah Martin became only the fifth Tiger to score 700 points in a single season. (Hardaway himself was the second.) Last season, freshman Precious Achiuwa filled the void left by James Wiseman and earned American Athletic Conference Player of the Year honors. But this year? Who is the man? A basketball team with four or five go-to players is a team without a go-to player.
Joe Murphy

Five players have led the Tigers in scoring in at least one game, with sophomores D.J. Jeffries and Landers Nolley each leading in three. Another sophomore, Boogie Ellis, scored 24 points in the Tigers’ opening game — the team’s second highest total of the season — but doesn’t even start. Jeffries may be the most talented player on the roster, and Nolley has ACC credentials (from his season at Virginia Tech). But based on a tiny sample size of three games, DeAndre Williams may end up the face of this team. (The Evansville transfer missed the first seven games awaiting NCAA clearance.) An Alpha must want the ball not just in a game’s closing seconds, but every minute he’s on the floor. Williams appears to have a fire in his belly this program desperately needs.

What does Tiger Nation think of this team?
Related question: Would a FedExForum crowd ever boo a Hardaway-coached team? We won’t find out this winter, not with the Tigers’ home barn virtually empty for pandemic reasons. But looking back at the team’s collapse over the final four minutes against Tulsa on December 21st, it’s not hard to imagine that being an uncomfortable walk off the court for Hardaway and his players if 15,000 fans had paid for a seat to watch. It’s one thing to lose two out of three games in South Dakota. Quite another to cough up a win against a team that utterly embarrassed you (by 40 points) last February.

Judging by social media, Memphis fans are getting restless. The choppy, low-scoring games, the myriad lineups Hardaway incorporates (as he must, still searching for a rotation that won’t cough up games like the one against Tulsa), the feeling a Top-25 ranking is becoming a pipe dream under the watch of a man who has been vocal about top-five aspirations. None of these worries will survive a nice, lengthy winning streak. Five games, maybe six or seven. The day will come when FedExForum is again packed on game night. If Hardaway’s team is going to suffer growing pains, this may be the season for it.

Is there a must-see game remaining on the Tigers’ schedule?
Circle February 14th and March 6th (or 7th) on your calendar. An upset of Houston — currently the AAC’s gold standard — would be a significant notch on Hardaway’s belt. The teams meet in Texas on Valentine’s Day, then in Memphis for the season finale. (The date hasn’t been finalized yet.)

What should expectations be for this team?
This question is related to the structure of the 2021 NCAA tournament, presuming there is one. (If you think you know the format — in the time of coronavirus — take a breath. March is a long way from now.) Will the field be expanded? Will the field be contracted for “bubble play” in a single location? Will conference tournaments be a factor?

It would seem a top-three finish in the AAC would be a reasonable bar for this team to reach. They were picked by the coaches to finish second (behind only Houston) after back-to-back fifth-place finishes in Hardaway’s first two seasons on the bench. The Cougars have separated themselves, rising to fifth in the national rankings, though Tulsa also proved to be thorny for the league favorites. SMU won its first six games before falling to Houston Sunday night. Wichita State? Memphis needs to be better than two or three of these programs, and in year three of the Hardaway era, that’s not a big ask. With a new year upon us, perhaps the Tigers can turn that proverbial corner and make hopes for madness in March a little less questionable.

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Sports Tiger Blue

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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Sports Tiger Blue

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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Sports Tiger Blue

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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Sports Tiger Blue

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.”