Memphis basketball began a four-game road trip at this time last week.
The Tigers first knocked off San Francisco at the Chase Center—home of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors—before flying out to Lahaina, Hawaii for this week’s Maui Invitational. They then took the college basketball world by storm with a 99-97 overtime victory over No. 2 UConn, the back-to-back national champions, on Monday. After that, they outlasted Michigan State in another tough, physical battle on Tuesday that advanced them to the final round.
But Memphis had nothing left to give after defeating three top-61 KenPom opponents in a six-day span.
The Tigers concluded their long road trip with a resounding 90-76 loss to No. 4 Auburn in the Maui Invitational championship Wednesday. Penny Hardaway and Co. aren’t hanging their heads about it, though.
“We’re not going to let this game define who we are…We didn’t take care of business today, but we learned a lot from this entire [week] and saw that we belong,” Hardaway said postgame. “This is a new team, 13 new players. To get to the championship, not knowing each other, not being in a battle before this weekend with the best teams in the country, I’m really proud of the effort.”
Memphis now gets the next week off before hosting Louisiana Tech inside FedExForum next Wednesday (7 p.m., ESPN+). Guard PJ Haggerty, who scored a game-high 27 points against Auburn, believes the Tigers will look much sharper after the break.
“We played some top-10 teams. None of those games were easy. We fought hard, came out the last one and lost. But at the end of the day it’s just one loss,” he said. “We’ll be back in the gym over break and just work on things we’ve got to work on, and we’ll be back for sure.”
Haggerty wasn’t the Tigers’ only standout in the tournament. In fact, he wasn’t even their biggest.
That distinction goes to Tyrese Hunter. The 6-foot guard averaged 20 points on 58.3% 3-point shooting in Memphis’ three games.
Colby Rogers, a 6-foot-4 guard, scored 14.6 points per contest—including a 19-point performance against UConn where he accounted for 8 of the Tigers’ 17 overtime points. Rogers began his college career at Cal-Poly in 2019 before making stops at Sienna and Wichita State. He—like many of his teammates—is unfamiliar with the big spotlight Memphis faced in Maui.
The Tigers will likely see their name in next week’s Associated Press (AP) Top 25 based off what they accomplished at the Lahaina Civic Center, so it’s easy to see why Rogers is still confident.
“I think we have a lot of confidence. Like Coach said, we’re a new team. To make it to the championship against two top-5 teams, that’s something to really hang your head up about,” he said. “Obviously, we lost. There’s no moral victories, but to go 3-1 on this road trip, I think this gives us a lot of momentum going into break.
“As long as we’re playing our best basketball in March, that’s what really matters.”
Hardaway still has some less than positive takeaways from Memphis’ loss, however, and rightfully so. Auburn won the rebounding battle 32-26 while leading for the entire game. Bruce Pearl’s team also scored 20 points off 11 forced turnovers and 18 second-chance points off 11 offensive boards.
Memphis—the nation’s third-best 3-point shooting team—got ran off the perimeter. It finished Wednesday’s game with a 67% clip on 3-pointers, but that only came on 9 attempts. It launched 22 and 23 respective shots from the perimeter against UConn and Michigan State.
Johni Broome dominated Memphis’ frontcourt with 21 points, 16 rebounds, 6 assists and 4 blocks while shooting 53% overall and 50% from beyond the arc. Broome and Dylan Cardwell, who scored 18 points on 8-of-8 shooting, combined for 6 offensive rebounds. Auburn also started the game on a 9-0 run in the first two minutes and 10 seconds.
“You let a team get out 9-0 on you. That’s the No. 4 team in the nation, you can’t recover from that. Then our weaknesses showed up today. They exposed us on the glass, and that’s something we talk about all the time as a group,” Hardaway said. “We talk about rebounding all the time because we know what it’s going to come down to—protecting the ball and rebounding. We just didn’t do it today.”
This is the second year in a row Memphis has been blown out in the final round of a mid-season tournament. The Tigers soundly fell to Villanova in the Battle 4 Atlantis championship game last season, which Memphis finished by missing the NCAA Tournament after going 7-8 in its last 15 games.
Hardaway can’t help but make some comparisons.
“I mean, you’re getting into two championship games against two really good teams. Villanova was hungry, hungrier than us. It came down to one-on-one kind of basketball like we kind of did today. It was kind of similar,” he said. “Here it came down to a rebounding game. And I’m going to always say that when you get in championship games, the ball can bounce any way. But you’ve got to be able to rebound and box out.
“We didn’t have that [mentality] last year. We get that mentality, then we’ll be champions instead of finishing runner-up.”
Memphis is used to being the more physical team during games, but Auburn outdid the Tigers in that department Wednesday. Hardaway—though he acknowledges it’s early in the season—is somewhat alarmed by how his team reacted.
The 2023-24 Tigers didn’t learn from their early-season lessons or blowout losses. Instead, they grew complacent and flamed out down the stretch.
Hardaway is now seemingly wide-eyed, hoping his 2024-25 squad doesn’t fall into the same trap.
“Yeah, it wasn’t a good response. You’ve got to think these young men have nerves. They haven’t been here as a group. It’s a new team. It’s the beginning of the season,” he said. “To be 3-1 on this stretch, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. But what I saw was a nervous team that didn’t make the challenge to hit and box out. If you hit and box out this game, the game is totally different. You’ve got to be able to do that against teams like this.”