Memphis’ path to top 5 NCAA Tournament seed murkier after loss
Memphis head coach Penny Hardaway yells at his team during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Wichita State, Sunday, Feb. 16, 2025, in Wichita, Kan. (Travis Heying/AP Photo)
WICHITA, Kan. — While many in Memphis turned their televisions to CBS late Saturday morning to see if their Tigers basketball team was on track to do something it hasn’t done in 16 years, Tyrese Hunter and his teammates simply went about their day.
The NCAA Tournament selection committee was set to do its first in-season reveal of its top 16 overall seeds in the Big Dance as things stood then, just a little more than one month until Selection Sunday on March 16. And the Memphis Tigers, which have wins over current Associated Press Top 25 teams No. 11 Michigan State, No. 19 Ole Miss, No. 21 Missouri and No. 23 Clemson, had at least an outside chance at hearing their name called and heading down a path of earning the program’s first top-four seed in the NCAA Tournament since 2009.
Well, that’s at least what the team’s fan base and some media members thought.
Hunter, a 6-foot point guard in his first season at Memphis but his fourth of college basketball overall, after spending the past two seasons at Texas and the one before that at Iowa State, wasn’t buying that there was hope.
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Memphis Tigers Memphis Tigers Basketball Wichita State Shockers NCAA Tournament Penny Hardaway Tyrese Hunter Subscriber OnlyThank you for supporting local journalism.
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Parth Upadhyaya
Parth Upadhyaya covers the Memphis Tigers men’s basketball team. A Raleigh, N.C., native and a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Media and Journalism, Upadhyaya is a longtime college hoops junkie. Prior to joining The Daily Memphian in 2022, he covered high school sports in western Pennsylvania for the Beaver County Times and Penn State football for the Centre Daily Times.
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