Memphis basketball is a top-16 team now. Penny Hardaway says the Tigers need to ‘act like it.’

This is how the collapse started last season.

The 77-75 nail-biter over Vanderbilt on Dec. 23, 2023. The 81-70 scare against Austin Peay on Dec. 30, 2023. The buzzer-beating finish at Tulsa on Jan. 4. The overtime heart attack with UTSA on Jan. 10. Those affairs, though not damning themselves, set Memphis’ horrific downfall in motion—a 7-8 record in its last 15 games to miss the NCAA Tournament after starting the campaign 15-2.

Fast forward to Wednesday night, the 2024-25 Tigers found themselves in a similar scenario. No. 16 Memphis defeated Louisiana Tech 81-71. But that came after it trailed at halftime, after it blew an 11-point lead in the second half, after the game was tied with just over seven minutes left. The Bulldogs, while favored to win Conference USA this season, entered the contest with a recent loss to Southern.

Memphis, meanwhile, earned two Quad 1 victories over No. 25 UConn and Michigan State in last week’s Maui Invitational. The Tigers also had a full week off before hosting Talvin Hester’s club inside FedExForum.

The one problem—Memphis is Louisiana Tech’s UConn. It is the Bulldogs’ Michigan State, or Auburn.

Hester and Co. essentially treated Wednesday’s game as if it was their Maui Invitational. The Tigers didn’t respond accordingly for most of the night.

“This was gonna be their national championship. The hangover from Hawaii still stood in the way, even though we knew what this game meant to them. We needed it to mean more to us,” Memphis coach Penny Hardaway told reporters postgame. “You’re just happy to get out of these games with Ws.”

The Tigers seemed like they were running away from Louisiana Tech a couple times. They led 7-0 in the contest’s opening minutes. They held the aforementioned 61-50 advantage with 11:05 left to play. But the Bulldogs always had an answer.

Whether it was ending the first half on 4-for-5 perimeter shooting, or erasing its double-digit deficit with a 13-2 run in less than four minutes, Louisiana Tech refused to go away.

Memphis managed to close the gap for good, however, after a 5-point possession from Tyrese Hunter and Nick Jourdain turned its edge from 4 points to 9 with 3:53 to go. Colby Rogers then hit a 3-point dagger with 55 ticks remaining that put the Tigers back up by 10.

Rogers—a senior transfer from Wichita State—understands the magnitude of showing up for opponents like Louisiana Tech, even if a win isn’t as rewarding as it is against power conference schools. The 6-foot-3 guard scored 13 points on 50% shooting against the Bulldogs.

“We are now the hunted, not the hunter now. That’s a total different mindset to have. We’re gonna get every team’s best shot moving forward,” he said. “Knowing that, we gotta make sure that we step on the gas, we do things at a higher level, do the small things at an even higher level. Everything just has to kind of intensify.”

Rogers isn’t sweating what happened Wednesday, though, at least not yet.

“Human nature just kinda got the best of us. But luckily we came out with the win. I think it’s just a learning curve for us,” he said. “These types of things can happen, but I just think we can learn from it. Moving forward, you just gotta make sure that when we have moments like this, we lock back in and just get back to doing what we are known to do, what we hold ourselves to and just hold each other accountable.”

Hardaway consistently put his team on blast in response to these kinds of outings last year. He went on tangents about how the Tigers were disinterested, unprofessional or apathetic towards their opponents after games like Austin Peay. He accused players of quitting on the team mid-season and mid-game after Memphis got blown out at SMU in February. He even forced players to answer questions asked of him about Memphis’ failures in front of reporters after the Tigers lost to Wichita State in their American Athletic Conference (AAC) Tournament opener in March.

His message is less of a critique and more of a challenge this year, though.

“What I’m talking about is validating who you are. If you’re in the rankings, then act like it,” Hardaway said. “Let’s stop reading the text messages about how great we are, and let’s buy into what we’re trying to do every single night.”

Rogers said he received a lot of those text messages, those phone calls, those compliments on social media Hardaway’s referring to after Memphis’ successful trip to Maui. But that doesn’t make him content with playing down to competition.

He faced the Tigers three times last season after all, so he had a first-row seat to watch how Memphis’ complacency killed it down the stretch. He’s determined to make sure his run with the Tigers doesn’t end the same way.

But how does Memphis plan to succeed in that endeavor?

“Penny harps a lot about just staying together, blocking the outside noise and making sure that regardless of what happens, we come together. We don’t spread out. We don’t separate,” Rogers said. “I think we’ve bought into that. We kinda lean on each other in tough moments. As long as we stay with that, we’ll be fine. We just can’t allow outside forces to creep in and mess up what we’re building.”

The Tigers host Arkansas State on Sunday (3 p.m., ESPNU).