The Memphis Tigers didn’t hold practice on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but Penny Hardaway still went to work. His alarm went off at 5 a.m., just like it always does. He ate breakfast and arrived at the practice facility around 6:45 a.m.. He walked four miles and grabbed his Medicine Ball drink from Starbucks, as well as a bottle of Powerade. Then he settled into the team’s video room to watch basketball for three hours.
Hardaway tries to watch at least seven games a day. None of the ones he studied last Saturday included Memphis or its next opponent, Louisiana Tech, which the Tigers will host Wednesday night. Rather, Hardaway spent that time catching up on games that were played around the country while his Tigers were competing in the Maui Invitational. He prefers to do his watching alone, sipping his drinks and tapping thoughts into his Notes app so he can share them with his staff later on. “I’m trying to study what teams are doing, maybe steal a play here and there,” he says. “I just love the game, man. I love this job. It’s nowhere near about the money for me. The only motivation for me right now is to win and win and win.”
Hardaway is the first to admit that there hasn’t been enough winning since he took over at his alma mater in the spring of 2018. The Tigers have won 69.2 percent of their games, but they’ve been to just two NCAA Tournaments and won only one game there. Beyond that, the program has been beset by chronic controversy and massive turnover, both on the roster and the staff. The current team has 10 new players (including nine transfers) as well as 10 new assistant coaches and staffers.
And yet, last week Hardaway reminded the world — and most importantly, himself — that he can still identify, recruit and coach talented players. Memphis came into the Maui Invitational unranked, but in its first two games it knocked off two-time defending champ UConn in overtime and then defeated Michigan State, 71-63, in the semifinals. The Tigers’ run ended in the final with a 90-76 loss to No. 2 Auburn, which dropped their record to 6-1, but the wins were enough to vault Memphis to No. 16 in this week’s AP poll. (And No. 13 in the Hoops HQ Top 25.) They also provided some hope for the team’s chastened fan base that at long last, their favorite son might finally be getting the hang of the job.
Hardaway, for one, believes that to be the case. “Experience has been my best teacher,” he said during a lengthy phone interview with Hoops HQ. “The last few years have been a struggle. That’s all on me. It’s unfortunate that there’s been negativity behind my name because that’s the last thing I wanted. I had to get myself together, look in the mirror and go, it’s time for you to grow up. It’s time for you to get things done the right way.”
The learning curve has been steep and, at times, quite painful. Perhaps that’s to be expected, given that Hardaway’s only previous coaching experience was at Memphis East High School, where he won a state title, and his AAU program, Team Penny. The smart move would have been to populate his staff with people who had extensive college experience. Instead, he brought in friends with longstanding NBA ties like Sam Mitchell, Mike Miller and Rasheed Wallace. Mitchell lasted one year, Miller lasted two and Wallace, who came on during the 2021-22 season, coached all of 10 games. The revolving door has continued to accelerate. According to the Daily Memphian, the program has employed at least 41 people since Hardaway was hired in March 2018, including 17 who reported directly to him.
“Experience has been my best teacher. The last few years have been a struggle. That’s all on me….I had to get myself together, look in the mirror and go, it’s time for you to grow up. It’s time for you to get things done the right way.”
The most recent jolt came just a few months ago, on Sept. 4, when Hardaway fired assistants Rick Stansbury, Faragi Phillips and Jamie Rosser, as well as special advisor Demetrius Dyson. The timing was unconventional, to say the least, coming as it did on the eve of the season. Hardaway informed Hoops HQ that he told his now-former staffers in March that they should stop working , although Stansbury, apparently believing he would be retained, stayed on through the summer to help with recruiting. Hardaway had also announced in May that assistant Andy Borman would not return. To fill his top two vacancies, Hardaway brought in Mike Davis, the former head coach at Indiana, UAB, Texas Southern and Detroit Mercy; and Nolan Smith, who played and coached at Duke and was previously an assistant at Louisville.
Hardaway ascribes the dizzying array of hirings and firings to a combination of inexperience, poor judgement and excessive loyalty to his NBA buddies. “The main thing is, I was a newbie and I hired a bunch of guys early on that didn’t know about the game,” he says. “That never works at this level. You have to have [college] veterans. In certain cases, the conflict of styles started to weigh on me and I wasn’t happy. This isn’t me picking on or blaming anybody. I just needed to grow and needed to become a better leader.”
On the same day the four staffers were let go, SI.com reported that the university had received an anonymous letter alleging major NCAA violations. A school spokesman acknowledged the existence of the letter and said it had been forwarded it to the NCAA. The timing of those reports gave the impression that the dismissals happened because of the letter, but both Hardaway and newly hired athletic director Dr. Ed Scott told Hoops HQ that was not true. “Those were basketball-related decisions,” said Scott, who started his job on July 29. “The letter had already been out there, but that was the first time it hit the media. The timing made it look like one caused the other, but that was not the case.”
Regrettably, this is not Memphis’ first tangle with the NCAA during Hardaway’s tenure. In 2019, the NCAA suspended Tigers forward James Wiseman 12 games for receiving impermissible benefits. He quit school before the suspension was completed. Hardaway wasn’t sanctioned for those violations, but he was suspended for the first three games last season after it was determined that he and an assistant violated NCAA rules when they visited a recruit in 2022.
Yet another blow landed in February when Memphis suspended senior forward Malcolm Dandridge for what it described as an eligibility issue. The day before Dandridge’s suspension, the university fired Leslie Brooks, the team’s academic advisor. The Commercial Appeal later reported the suspension was due to concerns over potential academic misconduct. Scott confirmed in August that the school had self-reported violations in the Dandridge case to the NCAA and he indicated to Hoops HQ that he expects it to be resolved in the near future. “We’re still working through the process with the NCAA and we’re confident that we’ve been very transparent and open with them as we try to bring this to a resolution,” Scott said.
In fairness to Hardaway, high turnover has been all too common inside Memphis’ athletics department as a whole, including when several staffers followed former AD Laird Veatch to his new job at Missouri. Two others left for Columbia and Florida. The arrival of Scott, who previously worked at Virginia and Morgan State, has given everyone a chance for a reset. Scott gained much favor with Hardaway in August when he hired Hardaway’s former teammate at Memphis, Tim Duncan (not the NBA Hall of Famer), to serve as Senior Deputy AD for men’s basketball. Still, Scott has made clear to Hardaway that the revolving door has got to stop turning — or at least turn a lot more slowly — in the future. “The one thing that’s going to be crucial for sustained success is stability within the staff because that’s what keeps the culture,” Scott says.
That goes for the roster as well. Even in an era of unprecedented transience, the Tigers rank No. 319 (out of 364 teams) on KenPom in continuity percentage, which measures the minutes that carried over from the year before. Last season, they were 342nd. Hardaway admits that he was blindsided by the mass exodus from last season, including with respect to his son, Ashton, who transferred to Saint Mary’s. “I thought I was going to have four or five guys [come back], but this is the state of college basketball,” he says. “Guys are being tampered with during the season and nobody wants to wait their turn anymore. It’s not me that they’re running from. It’s because they want playing time or more money.”
The departures forced Hardaway to dive deep into the transfer portal. The haul was impressive. The best of the nine imports were Texas senior guard Tyrese Hunter, who combined for 49 points on 12 of 20 three-point shooting in Memphis’s wins over UConn and Michigan State, and Tulsa guard P.J. Haggerty, a 6-foot-3 sophomore who is leading the Tigers in scoring (22.1 ppg) and rebounding (6.3) and ranks second behind Hunter in assists (3.0). With the AAC looking weaker than it has been in the past, the Tigers should have a glide path to the NCAA Tournament, although they will have limited margin for error once conference play begins.
Hardaway’s contract only lasts through the 2027-28 season, but Scott has thus far voiced full support for his coach. “I do believe Penny is the right guy for the job because of everything he has demonstrated since I’ve arrived,” he says. “Penny’s been very vulnerable about everything, which I’m proud of. He is now understanding he has to do a better job hiring the right people and then retaining them if he’s going to be able to sustain success.”
Hardaway is stating the obvious when he says “winning definitely helps,” but the early returns suggest those wins could keep coming — and helping. “I’m as happy as I’ve ever been since the first day I took the job,” Hardaway says. That’s good news for a program that hasn’t had enough of it lately, but Memphis fans can be forgiven if they’re taking a wait-and-see approach. If there’s one thing they’ve learned about this program, it’s that things can change in a hurry.
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