The most hyped-up team coming into the college basketball season is easily Penny Hardaway’s Memphis Tigers.
Hardaway is entering his second year at the helm of his alma mater. Before this, he had a lot of success in his tenure as an AAU coach and his time at Memphis East High School.
He has already proven himself as an elite recruiter, beating out the bluebloods to get the top prospect in the country in James Wiseman, as well as getting numerous other very good recruits. Those included fellow five-star recruit Precious Achiuwa, four-stars Boogie Ellis, who de-committed from Duke, Lester Quinones, Malcom Dandridge, Kentucky de-commit DJ Jeffries and Damion Baugh. All of them are freshmen for this upcoming year.
Hardaway is doing something different than what former coaches — most notably the past two in Tubby Smith and Josh Pastner — did not do, and that’s recruit guys that are from the city of Memphis, one of the best basketball hotbeds in the country. The Tigers have five players on this year’s roster that were born in Memphis and two more in Nashville, one of them being Wiseman.
The Tigers went 22-14 in Hardaway’s first year last season, making it to the second round of the NIT and increased attendance at Fedex Forum by nearly 8,000 fans per game from the previous year, averaging an AAC-leading 14,065 per game, which also ranked 17th in the country, all according to the official NCAA records.
This season is easily the most hyped-up season at Memphis since the 2008-09 season, the year following a trip to the national championship game and John Calipari’s final year before he left for Kentucky. The Tigers delivered, albeit not as much, that year, finishing 33-4, 16-0 in Conference USA and reached the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament.
That 2007-08 season was also the last time that the team had the program had AP All-Americans. Chris Douglas-Roberts was named to the first team and a guy named Derrick Rose was named to the third team in his lone season at Memphis.
The coaches between Calipari and Hardaway, that being Pastner and Smith, failed to carry the program to those heights, with only four NCAA Tournament appearances, resulting in just two wins and never making it past the Round of 32. Memphis fans are used to success, especially the success they had in the 80s and 90s, so it’s easy to tell they were getting very restless, and so far, Hardaway seems like the guy that can change that. They enter the season as the No. 14 team in the country.
One concern that some have had, is his actual coaching skill and his ability to coach a young core. The coaching style in college is a lot different from AAU and high school, and although a lot of his players have played for him before, there’s a way out there that you can see that the skills that they have may not translate as well in the college game. Also, the team is young, starting five freshman is always a daunting task, no matter who you are. The jury will be out coming into the year about that.
When it all comes down to it, they should have some good wins. Hardaway did a solid job with scheduling and that results on them having some good non-conference tests. They have a neutral site game against Oregon as part of the Phil Knight Invitational on November 12, another neutral site game against N.C. State on November 28 and a true road game against Tennessee on December 14.
With the AAC projected to be down this year, there is a good chance that they will roll through the conference with only one or two losses, but the real test will come in the NCAA Tournament — will they be able to make a deep run? That’s what is up for questioning coming into the season.
AJ Hoops 