Penny Hardaway on Memphis’ declining NCAA Tournament projections: ‘A win just isn’t a win anymore.’

Memphis basketball has six Quad 1 wins this season, as well as 10 combined victories in Quads 1 and 2. It’s also in the Associated Press (AP) Top 25 for the eighth consecutive week—its longest stretch since 2019-20.

But the No. 22 Tigers (21-5, 11-2 AAC) are still rapidly falling in most NCAA Tournament projections with each passing American Athletic Conference (AAC) game, especially after last Sunday’s upset loss at Wichita State.

CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm projected Memphis as a No. 4 seed last week. He now has it as a 6-seed. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi made a similar flip, switching the Tigers from a 5-seed to a 7-seed. YAGO Brackets—the Bracket Matrix’s No. 1 bracketology in the last five years—now considers Memphis a No. 8 seed.

Coach Penny Hardaway crafted the nation’s third-hardest non-conference schedule to avoid this exact fate, and his team went 10-3 against it. His efforts, however, now seem quite futile.

“It’s almost deflating to the guys probably, because they’re going, ‘Man, how does this work? We did all that work in the non-conference, and we’ve only lost two games in conference,’” Hardaway told reporters Friday. “I love our conference. It’s harder than people give it credit for, but the nation and the voters won’t let you get past a certain point. I’m seeing that now.

“Even if we were 26-0, I feel like we’d still be a 6-seed.”

Memphis’ decaying seed line coincides with its steep decline in predictive metrics. The Tigers are No. 48 in both KenPom and the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET), and No. 56 in Bart Torvik.

They ranked No. 28 in KenPom before facing off with East Carolina on Jan. 11, but dropped six spots despite a 74-70 victory. They then fell from 34th to 41st over a nine-game stretch where they went 8-1, and plummeted by seven more spots after losing in Wichita.

Hardaway cites Memphis’ subpar victory margin throughout AAC play as the main culprit. The Tigers are currently beating their conference foes by just 11.4 points per game. The AAC shapes out as the No. 11 league in Division I, according to the NET, sitting below conferences like the Missouri Valley, West Coast and Conference USA.

“When you penalize someone for their conference losses and not what you’ve done, I think that’s really weird…When you have the amount of Quad 1 and Quad 2 wins that we have, that’s supposed to mean something,” Hardaway said. “I think margin of victory is coming into play in a lot of this. So, I really don’t know. A win just isn’t a win anymore.”

The seventh-year headman contends that the Tigers’ situation would be different if they played in a power conference. In his mind, the AAC is at fault for Memphis no longer being in contention for the top-4 seed he dreamed of in December.

“You can be 6-6 in the Big 12 or the SEC, and you’ll be good to go,” Hardaway said. “It’s how they respect the conferences, and that’s unfortunate for us.”

Hardaway isn’t the only one noticing Memphis’ unfavorable treatment compared to power-conference schools. Dain Dainja does too.

The 6-foot-9 center (12.4 points and 6.4 rebounds per game) spent two years at Illinois and won a national championship at Baylor before transferring to Memphis last offseason. Dainja admits he didn’t know much about the AAC coming from a power league, but says he’s gained lots of respect for it throughout this year.

He still sees that others don’t share his new viewpoint, though.

“Not a lot of people respect this conference, so it is different [from] Illinois and the Big Ten. Their losses don’t look as bad as ours,” Dainja said.

Memphis is among the most decorated teams in college basketball this season. Its aforementioned six Quad 1 wins rank 10th in the country, it’s on track to win its first regular-season conference title since 2013 and it’s headed by Wooden Award candidate PJ Haggerty (21.2 points, 5.5 rebounds and 3.8 assists).

But the Tigers still sit behind nine teams with two or less Quad 1 wins in the NET—including No. 38 SMU, which has none. Hardaway says that’s nothing short of unfair.

“It just gets weirder every time you watch it, because teams that have no Quad 1 wins are ahead of us in the NET,” he said. “I don’t know how any of that works. Can we just get back to wins and losses, and who you played?”

Memphis hosts Florida Atlantic on Sunday (1 p.m., ESPN2).