Penny Hardaway appears to have Memphis in a much better place than last college basketball season through its first seven games of 2024. He attributes the early success to a significant shift in attitude.
More specifically, the seventh-year head coach believes his players are less focused on the negatives.
Hardway missed out on the NCAA Tournament during his sixth season at his alma mater. The Tigers finished 22-10 but they often played down to inferior opponents and fell apart down the stretch. Although it is a small sample size, that no longer appears to be as big of an issue or any issue at all.
Memphis beat Missouri, UNLV, Ohio and San Francisco right out of the gate and all four programs are nothing at which to scoff. An overtime win over back-to-back reigning national champion UConn and an eight-point win over Michigan State in Maui set up a championship game against Auburn, which proved to be the only loss thus far. The Tigers are 6-1.
When discussing the difference between this year’s team and last, Hardaway mentioned one specific shift. He threw some of his former guys under the bus without naming any names.
We had so many guys who complained about so much.
— Penny Hardaway
Most of the roster in Bluff City looks completely different. Only Noah Stansbury and Nicholas Jourdain remain, so they were not the problem a year ago.
That leaves the following guys who might’ve been the complainers:
- Jayhlon Young
- Jordan Brown
- Ashton Hardaway
- Carl Cherenfant
- Nae’Qwan Tomlin
- David Jones
- Caleb Mills
- Jaykwon Walton
- Jahvon Quinerly
- Joe Cooper
- Maclom Dandridge
- Jayden Hardaway
Memphis and college basketball fans can draw their own conclusions. Real ball-knowers can probably guess who it was. Penny Hardaway made a point during the offseason to assemble his roster differently.
The organizational side of it is where I’ve faltered. No other coach in the country’s outworked me in six years. Nobody’s gonna stay up watching more film. Nobody’s gonna out X-and-O me or anything like that. It was the other side of it. It was the side of just running the program. That’s something I had to get better with, and I’ve gotten better with it.
— Penny Hardaway
Talent is one thing. But talent did not get him to March Madness. There is more to it than on-court skills. With that in mind, after a lot of self-reflection, Hardaway took a new approach to player acquisitions.
I was looking for more of a defensive-minded group—a group of high character that really had a care factor about this city and how the city works. You just kinda do your research. Call the people that they know that have been in their lives and just talk about their character—how are they as a teammate, how are they being coached and you go from there.
We were definitely strategic. We were talking about the fit—the fit of what really needs to be here. If I want to play a certain way, which I do, then the young man has to understand that and commit to that.
— Penny Hardaway
There is still a lot of season left. We are only seven games into the new year. However, it appears as though Memphis is for real. It is NCAA Tournament or bust for Hardaway and he knows it!