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Welcome to this week’s Tigers Basketball Insider. Below you’ll find the latest news and analysis from The Daily Memphian’s Parth Upadhyaya, John Martin and Geoff Calkins.
For the second offseason in a row, Penny Hardaway has given his coaching staff nearly a complete makeover.
College basketball rosters nowadays are already revolving doors — and Memphis is no different in this regard — but the past two years have also seen significant turnover among the Tigers’ coaching staff. Entering his fifth season as Memphis’ head coach, Hardaway wasn’t afraid to shake things up again. So far, though, it sounds like the move is paying off.
“The new staff is meshing with the guys,” Hardaway said at his team’s open practice on Friday, Sept. 30. “It feels like a fresh start.”
After a season in which the Tigers finished 22-11 overall, made a run to the AAC Championship game and clinched an NCAA Tournament berth for the first time in seven years, Cody Toppert left to join LSU’s staff and Rasheed Wallace wasn’t retained. Larry Brown was bumped down from his title of assistant coach to now a “special advisor to the head coach.”
In came former Big 12 and AAC Coach of the Year Frank Haith, former Vanderbilt assistant and Whitehaven High School head coach Faragi Phillips and former New York Renaissance AAU club executive director Andy Borman.
It was just prior to the start of last season when Memphis added Wallace and Brown to the staff and moved Jermaine Johnson from assistant coach to director of player development.
Why Hardaway decided again to reshape his coaching staff is unclear. Perhaps change was needed after the drama surrounding the respective roles of Wallace and five-star recruit Emoni Bates, an underwhelming 9-8 start and the NCAA/IARP cloud that still hung over the program last season.
But this offseason, Hardaway has had to deal with the challenges of integrating six scholarship transfers onto the team in addition to the new coaches. Still, he said the process has been “fun.”
“You’ve got some familiar faces with me and Faragi,” Hardaway said. “We coached against each other (at the high school level) for years, and we’ve been good friends for years. That’s always a comfort for me. To have Coach Brown back was great, because he had a health scare earlier this summer. To have Coach Haith is big, as well, because he’s a guy that’s been the Coach of the Year in (two) different conferences.”
Hardaway mentioned that Brown’s choice to return to the Tigers’ program was even more significant because he “fought so hard to get him here” ahead of the 2021-22 campaign.
“I got him here because we need his knowledge,” he added. “We need his understanding. We need his expertise. So we need all of those things from him.”
With a great amount of collective coaching expertise comes personalities and egos that will need to gel.
Haith has led three different programs to the Big Dance. Phillips was a key member of Jerry Stackhouse’s staff at Vanderbilt for the past three seasons. Borman is the nephew of Hall-of-Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski and is considered an elite recruiter.
Ask Hardaway, though, and he’ll tell you he isn’t too worried about the cohesion of his new-look staff.
“We’ve got a lot of knowledge on the sidelines,” he said.
More from your Insider:
The team’s first open practice offered hints of a possible starting lineup, but the Oct. 23 exhibition against Christian Brothers will provide a true look at what type of team the Tigers will put on the court this season.
Something was different when the Memphis Tigers gathered for their annual open practice Friday night. What was it? “There’s no cloud,” said Penny Hardaway.
Despite the lack of national fanfare surrounding the Memphis Tigers heading into Hardaway’s fifth year as head coach, the future for his program is as bright as it’s been since he took over in 2018.
The “Memphis Basketball Block Party” on Oct. 15 will celebrate the start of its men’s and women’s basketball seasons. This event will replace Memphis Madness.
Head coach Penny Hardaway’s team lost seven of the top 10 players from last season’s rotation and added six new transfers and one international prospect from Spain this offseason. So, there will be plenty of faces that fans will be unfamiliar with this year.
This month, various University of Memphis basketball coaches have visited at least 10 prospects — four in the Class of 2023 and six in the Class of 2024.
Three years after James Wiseman last put on a University of Memphis basketball uniform, the school finally received a ruling from the Independent Accountability Resolution Process.
A nearly three-year-long saga, in which the University of Memphis faced possible sanctions from the NCAA and the IARP, is over.
The IARP’s decision was stunning vindication for Penny Hardaway and for Memphis. So go ahead, celebrate.
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