The coach’s son lay on the hardwood in the fetal position, protecting the basketball as if it were a newborn baby. His team leading by a single point with fewer than ten seconds to play, opposing players swarmed the Tiger senior as multiple teammates called and signaled for a timeout. Instead of granting the timeout, though, officials ruled one of those opponents also claimed possession, granting the underdog one final chance to erase the Memphis lead.
The lead was erased. Memphis coach Penny Hardaway threw his water bottle 30 feet in defeated disgust. He threw that water bottle for every last Memphian who witnessed Friday night’s horror show from Columbus, Ohio. The dreams of a long-awaited NCAA tournament run by the beloved home team were once again dashed, this time with egregious errors — some by game officials — that stacked upon one another like Tarot cards, every one of them portending black death for Memphis basketball.
With a few plays executed differently, the Tigers could have made the lousy “jump ball” call a moot point. Kendric Davis made an ill-advised pass near midcourt with 20 seconds left. The ball was intercepted, leading to that final sequence with Jayden Hardaway on the floor, cradling the rock. Florida Atlantic’s game-winning basket was scored via layup, no Tiger offering merely adequate resistance. It was acutely painful to watch. We all needed a water bottle to hurl.
And if the pain of the game result was excruciating, the big-picture ripple effect is purely paralyzing. With Fairleigh Dickinson — the East region’s 16th seed — having upset Purdue earlier, the Tigers would have had what amounts to a walkover Sunday. And with a win Sunday, Hardaway’s Tigers would return to the Sweet 16, that second-weekend land of delights in March Madness, the weekend where proud programs promote themselves for an entire nation of witnesses (and star recruits). Instead, merely five days after beating Houston (the country’s top-ranked team), Memphis lost to a team that will replace the Cougars as members of the American Athletic Conference next season. This was the basketball gods drilling an entire fan base in the soft parts.
We’ll get ’em next year. Sadly, there is no “we” for next year, not in college basketball. Davis has played his final game as a Tiger (and courageously, on a painfully turned right ankle). So has Alex Lomax and DeAndre Williams. Next year’s team will be a roster built from scratch by Hardaway, linked to the 2022-23 season by jerseys, sure, but not by the names on the back of those jerseys. “Next year” is ever the disappointing bridesmaid, this year being the one a fan cherishes, the one we cling to in the fetal position until it has no more oxygen to breathe.
Tiger fans with memories as old as 15 years will remember a point being shaved from the Memphis total in the 2008 national championship, Derrick Rose’s toes having been exposed (by video) to have touched the three-point stripe on a basket that originally gave Memphis three points. Kansas, of course, tied the game at the buzzer and won in overtime. Cut to Friday night in Columbus, and FAU was granted a point when video review exposed officials for missing an Owl three-pointer. The Owls, of course, won by a single point. How do these events happen at the expense of the same program?
We are reminded at times that it’s okay to not be okay, and this is becoming conventional wisdom, a healthy mental-management mantra. Life will not feel okay among the Memphis Tigers’ fan base for a while, not with a 14th consecutive offseason at least one week longer than we’d prefer. There will be many happy memories, eventually, from the season just past. Davis and the AAC tournament championship are stamped in bold ink on this program’s decorated timeline. But for now . . . pain. Grab a nearby water bottle. Throw it as far as you can. If you happen to clock an owl, so be it.
