Why Penny Hardaway says Memphis basketball is better than ever after disposing Tulane

Memphis basketball has seen the heights of a top-10 team this season, but it’s also seen the lows of a season-altering, four-game losing streak. Penny Hardaway was once considered a candidate for National Coach of the Year earlier this year, but he’s now among the most scrutinized individuals in college basketball after his team’s astonishing collapse.

Through all the praise and criticism, however, the Tigers have slowly been shaping themselves to be the squad Hardaway envisioned when putting this bunch of highly-touted transfers together last summer. And while they likely didn’t show off the final product Sunday versus Tulane, they did give spectators a solid rough draft. February obviously isn’t the most ideal time for a team to come together, but it may the perfect time for a Memphis team looking to salvage its season.

“I think what they’ve done is say, ‘Hey, we only have so many games left. Let’s grow closer. Let’s not grow apart. Whatever’s happened up until now, there’s nothing we can do about it,'” Hardaway said Sunday. “They’re starting to hang out…They’re starting to do things together, be around each other more on the road and start talking about basketball and what’s going on. We obviously let an opportunity slip away by losing four games in a row, but we’ve got a grasp on it again.”

The Tigers’ performance against the Green Wave perfectly encapsulated how much they’ve grown in the past two weeks. They forced just 7 turnovers and allowed a 41% 3-point shooting clip in an 81-79 loss at Tulane on Jan. 21, but they completely flipped the switch on Ron Hunter’s club inside FedExForum.

Memphis was relentless to start the contest, refusing to give Tulane an inch. The Green Wave had no answers for Memphis’ full-court press, which generated 9 steals in the first half. David Jones, Jahvon Quinerly and Jaykwon Walton racked up 2 apiece during the opening period, and the Green Wave shot 8-of-29 from the field and 27% from beyond the arc before halftime.

Hardaway’s team finished the contest with 14 forced turnovers, 12 steals and 5 blocked shots while scoring 18 points off turnovers. Offensively, it racked up 21 assists, 12 offensive rebounds and a 47% shooting clip. Memphis won the game 90-78, but the score would’ve been much more lopsided if not for a 22-13 Tulane run in garbage time.

“[Tulane] beat up on us pretty bad in that [first] game, especially in the second half…Some things they did to us kinda embarrassed me when I watched the game afterwards. So, we tightened all those things up and came in with a lot of energy on making sure we didn’t allow that stuff to happen again,” Hardaway said. “Aggressive switching man-to-man…That’s what we weren’t doing during the four-game losing streak and pretty much during the 10-game win streak. We weren’t at that level.”

The Tigers’ impressive showing wasn’t all that took place on the court during the contest. Memphis and Tulane—the bitter rivals they’ve become under Hardaway and Hunter—got quite chippy at times during dead ball periods. Officials called five technical fouls in the second half alone, three against Tulane and two against Memphis. Four of them came from two double-technical calls.

Both teams got whistled for 23 personal fouls throughout the game. Each club also reached the bonus in both halves. The Green Wave have been a thorn in the Tigers’ side for years, and beat Memphis at its absolute worst a few weeks ago. But Quinerly, who finished the afternoon with 18 points, 6 assists, 5 rebounds and 3 steals on 4-of-7 perimeter shooting, says there’s no bad blood between the two programs.

“Obviously, they beat us when we went down there [to New Orleans]. Any team would’ve kinda taken that personally. But at the end of the day, I think it was just two teams being super competitive,” he said postgame. “They didn’t like being down as much as they were. I was just trying to keep everybody level-headed. I knew that when you’re down a lot, it’s easy to start talking and doing all that extra stuff.”

Memphis now gears up for the most important stretch of its season. The U of M will take on top-100 NET opponents in each of its next four games, and will get three projected Quad 1 and 2 opportunities in that same span. The Tigers visit North Texas (No. 78 in the NET) and SMU (No. 44 in the NET) in their next two outings.

They’re well aware of how importance these chances are, considering that they’d likely miss the NCAA Tournament if the season ended today. Quinerly, who went to the Sweet 16 twice while at Alabama, knows some of his teammates like Jones, Walton, Nick Jourdain and others have never been to the Big Dance in their collegiate careers. The 6-foot-1 guard doesn’t want that to be their fate.

“I would say we’re on edge. There’s only a couple guys in here who’s played in an NCAA Tournament game, who knows what it feels like. And there’s a lot of guys who are down to their last year who haven’t been able to experience that,” Quinerly said. “With it being your last year, you wanna go out on a tournament run. That’s reality. Anybody would wanna go out on a crazy run, especially guys who haven’t been there…Seeing the bubble talk has got guys motivated.”

Hardaway also understands how big of a stretch this is for his team. But he also thinks it’s important to go into said stretch the way Memphis will—off an emphatic triumph like the one it had Sunday. The Tigers take on North Texas on Thursday inside UNT Coliseum (7 p.m., ESPN+).

“We understood what was going on today and the magnitude of the game. We took care of business, and we’re playing at a high level right now. So, that makes it even better going on these road trips,” Hardaway said. “This reminds me [of] when we were going to VCU, Texas A&M—all these games where we felt like every game we went into, we were gonna win. That four-game losing streak, it just seemed like everything was a struggle and we just had to wait until the game started to see what was gonna happen no matter what we did. So now, it’s back to where we were but even better now because the guys are more committed than they’ve ever been.”