Tag: U of M

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Sports Tiger Blue

Talented Teasers?

Penny Hardaway (Credit: Wes Hale)

Are the Memphis Tigers a legitimate Top-10 team, Final Four contenders? Or are they the biggest teasers east of the Dallas Cowboys? Nineteen games into the 2023-24 season, it seems the answer to one of these questions will ultimately be in the affirmative.

Sunday’s loss at Tulane — the Green Wave’s first upset of a Top-25 team since the Clinton presidency — changed the Tigers’ season, and compounded last Thursday’s loss at home to USF. A team that started the week undefeated in a less-than-respected American Athletic Conference now has a two-game losing streak and, worse, merely 12 regular-season games left to improve its resume for those who hand out seeds for the NCAA tournament. Memphis, you might note, has never reached the Sweet 16 seeded lower than sixth.

Last Thursday night at FedExForum could have been an anomalous nadir. With the arena virtually empty — the university publicly urged fans to stay home and off the icy roads — Memphis looked all of its number-10 ranking in taking a 20-point lead into the second half. Then they seemed to hit black ice as a unit and allowed USF to storm back, tie the game with less than a minute to play, and win the contest on a Kasean Pryor free throw with five seconds to play. (There’s brutal irony in a team from South Florida knocking off the Tigers while fans were home dripping their faucets.) The Tigers’ late-game hero Jahvon Quinerly committed a turnover in the game’s closing seconds and missed a desperation three-point attempt at the buzzer. If empty seats could boo, they would have.

The loss was especially bizarre, as it came four days after Memphis looked like their predecessors from 2008 or 1985, both Final Four years. The Tigers scored 112 points in beating Wichita State, the most on the road for this program in 69 years. Against USF, they couldn’t crack 80. The Tigers drained 19 three-pointers in overwhelming the Shockers, a program record. Against the Bulls, they missed 22 of their 28 shots from long range. Memphis lost despite outscoring USF 42-18 in the paint and 21-2(!) on fast breaks. The numbers don’t make sense, but the loss is permanent and will cost Memphis its spot in that hallowed Top 10.

As long as Quinerly and David Jones remain healthy, the Tigers will enter March with an arsenal most teams — “power conference” or otherwise — would envy. Jones (21.7 points per game) is the leading candidate for AAC Player of the Year. Right behind him may well be Quinerly (14.0 points, 4.7 assists). Were it not for Quinerly’s game-winning treys against Tulsa and SMU, the Tigers might have a losing record in league play. Jones took a three-point shot that could have won Sunday’s game at Tulane. He missed, as stars sometimes do. How will the Tigers process two straight gut punches as they wait a week before returning to play (Sunday at UAB)?

Following the Tigers’ narrow escape against SMU on January 7th, Hardaway emphasized the joy he took in seeing his team improve while winning. Beats the “learn from our losses” track every day of the week. And the Tigers are certainly better for their recent 10-game winning streak. But Hardaway also suggested this group of veteran transfers may actually be too confident, that they feel like any obstacle or deficit can be overcome, and this can sometimes compromise group effort. A home loss to a team with a NET rating of 146, you gotta believe, might help reduce that overconfidence intangible.

Another intangible to track with these Tigers: team chemistry. Following the USF loss, Hardaway suggested internal strife was impacting who he could put on the floor and when. If this is the case (more than two months into the season), the likelihood of a full recovery — let alone a Final Four run — seems remote. The sixth-year coach may have the greatest challenge of his career on his hands: Getting the most out of a talented team before the players on that team sabotage the mission. That would be a cruel tease, indeed.

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Sports Tiger Blue

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

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

Remembering Danton Barto

Danton Barto (Credit: U of M Athletics)

My memories of Memphis Tiger football in the early 1990s are foggy. (For one thing, it was Memphis State football back then.) But my memories of Danton Barto — both his name and the human being who wore it, along with number 59 for the Tigers — remain distinct. Playing for teams that won games with defense, Barto was the Tiger defense from 1990 to ’93.

I arrived in Memphis in the summer of 1991. I didn’t attend a lot of Tiger football games my first three years in the Mid-South, let alone report on them. But the handful of games I saw at the Liberty Bowl featured a consistent image, that of a hyperactive, if undersized, linebacker making tackles from sideline to sideline in hopes of keeping his team in a position to win. These were not great Memphis teams. The Tigers went 5-6 in ’91 (Barto led the team with 141 tackles), 6-5 in ’92 (Barto led the team with 127 tackles), and 6-5 in ’93 (Barto led the team with 144 tackles). But they beat Southern Cal (!) and Mississippi State Barto’s sophomore year. They beat Arkansas in both ’92 and ’93, and Mississippi State again Barto’s senior year. They brought smiles to this under-appreciated corner of the college football landscape.

And there was Barto’s name. A linebacker’s name. Say it along with Butkus, Nitschke, Bednarik, and Lambert. Danton Barto was born to be a linebacker, one who left an imprint with his tackles. Somehow, Barto never played in an NFL game. When he remained unsigned in the fall of 1994, I hung up my scout’s hat for good. I’ve since seen vastly inferior players line up behind a defensive line on fall Sundays. At the very least, Barto would have been a special-teams killer in the pro ranks.

Danton Barto died Sunday at the still-young age of 50 from complications of Covid-19. He had not been vaccinated, which will haunt those of us who remember him, and particularly those who knew and loved him. Would a pair of injections have protected Barto from the coronavirus? The likelihood is a resounding yes. The most tragic deaths are those that could be avoided, in Barto’s case with what now amounts to a simple medical decision.

The day will come — and it will be soon — when Danton Barto’s name and the stories associated with him bring smiles again. His impact was too positive, his love and devotion to Memphis (especially its flagship university) too large for the circumstances of his death to linger as a shadow. For now-veteran sportswriters and our ilk, we must “defog” our memories, to Saturday nights when number 59 was the best defensive player on the field at the Liberty Bowl. When Danton Barto’s next hit would be even more ferocious than his last. A man of impact then. A man of impact still.

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News News Blog

Rudd to Step Down at University of Memphis in 2022

CREDIT: University of Memphis

University of Memphis

U of M President M. David Rudd

The University of Memphis has announced that President M. David Rudd will be leaving his position in May 2022. He plans to transition to faculty in 2023 for research and teaching. Here’s the official announcement from the U of M:

Dr. M. David Rudd, the 12th president of the University of Memphis, will be leaving his position in May 2022. He will transition to faculty in 2023 to continue his research, after a year sabbatical abroad.

“We are deeply grateful for the tireless service and dedicated leadership President Rudd has given to the University of Memphis, the City of Memphis, the UofM Lambuth campus and all of West Tennessee,” said Doug Edwards, chair of the University of Memphis Board of Trustees. “His innovative efforts have advanced the University educationally and financially, positioning the UofM to compete at the highest levels nationally. The UofM will continue its commitment to research and attaining Carnegie 1 status; development of a diverse and inclusive campus community within faculty, staff and student populations; a comprehensive, successful athletic program; and fiscal responsibility.”

The Board of Trustees will have a special-called meeting today at noon to discuss the presidential search process which may include the search committee composition and the use of an executive search firm. Additional information on the meeting can be found at https://www.memphis.edu/bot/meetings/. The successful candidate will be named before May 2022; therefore no interim will be appointed.

Rudd is completing his seventh year as President of the University of Memphis, a position he has held since May 2014. He came to the UofM the previous year and held the position of Provost. As a Distinguished University Professor of Psychology, he also continues funded research and maintains his affiliation with the National Center for Veterans Studies at the University of Utah as co-founder and scientific director.

Student success, research growth and community partnerships have been critical goals during his tenure in Memphis, with record-breaking improvements in student retention and graduation rates coupled with significant growth in research expenditures, along with community partnerships to support students. He spearheaded efforts to create a new division of Student Success; developed the University’s first integrated enrollment, retention and graduation plan; created a one-stop admissions center; launched UofM Global, developed targeted degree pathways for all majors; implemented an Academic Coaching for Excellence initiative; and offered need-based funding for the first time in UofM history.

Efforts to grow community partnerships and engagement have been successful during his tenure. Initiatives include corporate partnerships with UofM Global and FedEx (LiFE: Learning inspired by FedEx), Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare (MAAP) and the City of Memphis (COMPETE and RISE). These unique programs allow employees to overcome academic and financial barriers to receive their degrees. Additionally, the UMRF Research Park and the launching of UMRF Ventures, a private company held by the UofM Research Foundation, has led to many new partnerships with companies. Ventures hosts several FedEx Call Centers, a data analytic center and an IT Command Center. It employs more than 450 students and gross revenue approached $5.3 million in only its third year. Other innovative partnerships include the City of Memphis, Tennis Memphis and the UofM Leftwich Tennis Center expansion and the Memphis Symphony Orchestra in Residence at the UofM, which offers a series of world-class symphonic music on campus.

A total of more than $660 million in new University resources has been generated over the last seven years, including $260 million in fundraising, $55 million in new maintenance funds, $249 million in new capital investment and improvements and operational increases of more than $100 million. From an operational perspective, the UofM currently contributes nearly $1.1 billion in economic activity annually, supports nearly $500 million in wages and salary payments for local workers and is directly or indirectly responsible for roughly 9,900 Memphis-area jobs.

More than $500 million is being invested on campus and in the University Neighborhood District, with more than $140 million in private funds. Under Rudd’s leadership, the campus has been enhanced significantly while expanding rapidly. The Laurie-Walton Family Basketball Center and the Indoor Football Practice Facility have provided Tiger Athletics with two of the top facilities in the country. The Hunter Harrison Memorial Pedestrian Cable Bridge, parking garage, plaza and Alumni Mall Amphitheater have greatly improved the campus both functionally and aesthetically. Further, the forthcoming Scheidt Family Music Center, R. Brad Martin Student Wellness Center and Plaza, and Mike Rose Natatorium will provide students with state-of-the-art facilities to further support their growth. A new STEM building is currently in the planning phase and was funded this past year by the Tennessee legislature and set to break ground in 2022.

Rudd has a bachelor’s degree from Princeton and master’s and PhD degrees in psychology from the University of Texas.

The University of Memphis Board of Trustees extends their sincere gratitude to President M. David Rudd for his exemplary leadership and his varied and lengthy list of extraordinary accomplishments.

Rudd also shared a personal message to the UoM campus on his Twitter page.

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News News Blog

U of M Professor Wins National Poetry Fellowship

CREDIT: Courtesy Marcus Wicker

A University of Memphis professor recently won a 2021 Creative Writing Fellowship that includes an award of $25,000.

Poet Marcus Wicker is an associate professor at the U of M. Wicker is one of 35 writers out of over 1,600 to earn this award through the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). 

Wicker teaches English in the Master’s of Fine Arts program at the U of M. In addition to his work there, Wicker is poetry editor for the Southern Indiana Review. 

“Poetry helps me discover, articulate, and clarify ideas I feel instinctively but can’t make sense of otherwise,” Wicker says. “A good deal of my poems use humor and music as a lens to explore the self and issues of social import, especially those pertaining to the African-American community.”

“I love reading work that moves me to catharsis during trying times, and before anything else, I’m just aiming to write the kind of poems I’d like to see floating around in the world.”

Courtesy Marcus Wicker

Wicker

Since 1967, the Arts Endowment has awarded more than 3,600 Creative Writing Fellowships totaling over $56 million. The fellowships for 2021 are in poetry and give award recipients the opportunity to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement. 

“The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support these 35 talented poets through Creative Writing Fellowships,” says Amy Stolls, director of literary arts at the Arts Endowment. “These fellowships often provide writers with crucial support and encouragement, and in return, our nation is enriched by their artistic contributions in the years to come.” 

Wicker is the author of Silencer and Maybe the Saddest Thing. He has garnered a slew of accomplishments in the writing community, including winning a Tennessee Arts Fellowship. His poems have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The Atlantic, Poetry, American Poetry Review, and many other publications.  

“Writing can be a pretty solitary pursuit,” Wicker said. “Recognition from the NEA is a humbling vote of confidence that affirms my life’s work.”

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News The Fly-By

MEMernet: COVID-19 Vaccines Arrive, Tigers at Target, and the McRib

Wheels down

The first COVID-19 vaccines arrived here Sunday. FedEX Corp. captured this historic moment in a tweet that could not have come soon enough.

Positive 2020?

University of Memphis president Dr. David Rudd tweeted a bold statement last week. “One thing got much better in 2020.”

McRib Vaccine

E. Parkway McDonalds is still going strong on Twitter even though the restaurant there is not (it closed years ago). The account captured this gross but weirdly accurate moment in time last week as the mysterious McRib sandwich reappeared.

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Avenue Coffee Announces Closure

CREDIT: Avenue Coffee/Facebook

Avenue Coffee/Facebook

After six years in business, the U of M area coffee shop announced on Facebook Friday that it would close on Sunday, April 19th.

The shop — a quiet study spot for college students and a go-to pick-me-up for Normal Station residents — operated as a nonprofit. The “coffee shop with a cause” donated a portion of each month’s proceeds to a variety of social justice organizations.

Late last month, the shop created a GoFundMe campaign to help cover expenses and barista pay as business decreased dramatically due to COVID-19 closings, including a shutdown of its dine-in business and shuttering of the nearby U of M campus. The campaign had not yet reached $1,000 as of publication of this article. Avenue has recently been open for curbside/to-go service only.

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News News Blog

U of M to Launch Commercial Aviation Program This Fall

CREDIT: CIT

CIT

Crew Training International instructor working with students

The University of Memphis will begin training pilots this fall with a new commercial aviation program.

The university is partnering with Millington’s Crew Training International (CTI) Professional Flight Training to offer a Bachelor of Science in Commercial Aviation degree.

David Rudd, U of M president said the Commercial Aviation program is meant to prepare students for 21st-century jobs and better position them for opportunities at companies like Fedex Express.

“There will be ample demand for qualified, well-trained pilots in the coming decades, and this program and partnership will help U of M students become top candidates for these careers,” Rudd said.

Students in the program will receive 61 credit hours of professional aviation training, and 59 hours of classroom instruction including courses in business and management. The degree is meant to prepare graduates for careers in corporate and general aviation, other aviation-related businesses, airport operations, and government regulation of aviation.

With a bachelor’s degree in aviation, a graduate’s required number of flight hours to become a commercial pilot decreases by 500.

The program also gives veterans an opportunity to use post-9/11 benefits for flight training costs, now that the U of M is partnering with CTI. Additionally, high school students in the Aviation Study program at T-STEM Academy East High School are expected to “naturally and locally progress into the U of M’s program.”

This will create an “exciting local path that has a global impact,” Jim Bowman, senior vice president of flight operations for Fedex said.

The program will be “uniquely positioned” to support the needs of the local community and address the “looming” pilot shortage. The U of M reports that more than 42 percent of active U.S. airline pilots will retire over the next 10 years. Boeing estimates that in the next 20 years, North American airlines need 117,000 new pilots.

Bowman said as the aviation industry evolves, aviators have to be more tech savvy and better prepared academically than before.

“I’m excited that the University of Memphis is now part of the path to a successful career in the aviation industry, and I congratulate the university’s leadership for having the foresight to create this program,” Bowman said.

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Editorial Opinion

Self-Inflicted Wounds

Last weekend, the University of Memphis, through the aegis of its department of journalism and its law school, conducted the second annual Law School for Journalists, in which members of the local news media took part in various role reversals along with participating lawyers and judges. As we said last year, the event should become a tradition, and it seems well on its way to becoming one.

A special treat of the proceedings was Saturday’s luncheon address to participants by one of the lions of journalism, former Nashville Tennessean publisher John Seigenthaler who, appropriately for this occasion of looking from one side of the fence to the other, had also logged serious time in government as an adviser to attorney general Robert Kennedy.

But it was as a journalist that Seigen-thaler spoke to the mixed assembly at the U of M-area Holiday Inn. It was a case of a veteran and traditionalist looking both backward and forward at the same time. The legendary publisher made every effort to update his sense of his craft, focusing — as everyone in journalism must increasingly do — on the newer electronic art of online journalism that has begun to supersede even broadcasting as a staple of communication.

Seigenthaler spoke of journalism’s “self-inflicted wounds,” one of which was perpetrated against himself — an egregiously libelous caricature of him as a potential assassin that was posted for some months on the Wikipedia Web site before being corrected. Seigenthaler also reviewed the case of The New York Times‘ erstwhile fabricator Jayson Blair and those of several other recent frauds perpetrated within the journalistic mainstream.

Beyond these outright misrepresentations, however, Seigenthaler noted an even greater danger: that of willful ignorance, of not knowing how the diverse and complex modern world actually works.

To some degree, the presence in journalism of ever greater numbers of women and minorities has begun to remedy that situation — though Seigenthaler, citing the unexpected lessons of Katrina, believes that the intersection of race with poverty is one corner of reality that has never been investigated properly.

His most surprising caveat: that at a time when resurgent varieties of Islam have begun to dominate the map of world history, Western journalism — and the American brand in particular — is way behind the curve in understanding that religion and its motivations. Seigenthaler’s solution? More newsroom hirings of Muslims. Only through such an osmosis could we close so potentially lethal a gap in our mutual understanding.


The Lesson of Walter Reed

And speaking of wounds: Even through all the Anna Nicole Smith brouhaha, most Americans have begun to learn something from their media of the abominable conditions awaiting the legions of maimed veterans of duty in Iraq who are returning home for medical treatment and rehab — in proportions far exceeding those of any other American war.

Mold, filth, improper and insufficient protocols, red tape, and neglect — all this and worse confront our veterans at the hands of this benefits-cutting administration that would shame the political opposition with the slogan “Support Our Troops,” then shames itself by failing to do so in the most elementary sense.