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College basketball rankings: Memphis deserves a spot in top 10 after pounding Virginia to improve to 9-2 – CBS Sports
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It took Penny Hardaway four seasons to take Memphis to the NCAA Tournament. He has endured an NCAA investigation. Those are just two short sentences that illustrate how things haven’t always gone smoothly for the former NBA All-Star since he accepted the opportunity to lead his alma mater. And in the early years, when things weren’t going so well for any number of reasons, the most common thing random fans would tweet when compelled to get a joke off was something along the lines of, “Well, this is what happens when you hire a ‘high school coach.'”
Yes, it is true that Hardaway was a high school coach in the city when Memphis hired him. So, yes, Memphis did technically hire a high school coach. But when folks regularly labeled Hardaway that way, it was never meant as a simple statement of fact as much as it was meant as an undeniable slap in the face.
I’m sure it bothered Hardaway.
It would’ve bothered me.
And I couldn’t help but think of that as Memphis recorded its latest big win Tuesday night, this one a 77-54 victory over Virginia, how I used to couldn’t go one week without seeing somebody call Hardaway a “high school coach.” Now it feels like it’s been years since I’ve heard somebody negatively label him that way, which is a testament to the growth Hardaway has made in his six years working at this level, and to the consistently impressive program he’s now running.
He took the Tigers to the NCAA Tournament in 2022.
He took them again in 2023.
And now he’s taken them all the way up to No. 9 in Wednesday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings, where Purdue remains No. 1 for the fourth consecutive day.
“We have the energy back in the city,” Hardaway said late Tuesday. “We have the energy back in the building. We have a good opportunity to do something special.”
Hardaway challenged this team in the offseason — even before he knew exactly what this team would look like — by creating a non-league schedule that would either allow the Tigers to build a nice at-large resume for the NCAA Tournament or really send them into conference play with some bumps. There was no great way to know how it would go, but it’s gone incredibly well. Memphis is 9-2 with six wins over power-conference teams, five wins over top-55 teams at KenPom.com, and five wins away from home over top-100 teams at KenPom.
The Tigers have seven victories inside the first two quadrants. The only other team in the country that also already has that many wins inside the first two quadrants is top-ranked Purdue. Read that sentence again, if you need to.
Where will things go from here?
As always, we’ll see.
But, for what it’s worth, KenPom is projecting Memphis to be favored in every remaining game until it plays at FAU on March 9 in the regular-season finale. That alone suggests some long winning streaks over the next few months are likely in the Tigers’ future, and that Hardaway is now set up to continue to show his previous skeptics that hiring a “high school coach” nearly six years ago was quite literally the smartest thing Memphis could’ve done.
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