Memphis basketball is finally emerging from the storm and Tulane could feel it | Giannotto

Tulane coach Ron Hunter paused an extra few seconds in the handshake line Sunday afternoon because he wanted Penny Hardaway to hear it from him.

He knew well about the angst over Memphis basketball’s slide from national dark horse to befuddling bubble team. The Green Wave had helped contribute to it. So in this moment, immediately after a convincing 90-78 Memphis win over Tulane at FedExForum, Hunter punctuated his embrace of Hardaway with his own version of postgame analysis.

“I told him, if they play like that in the first half, they’re by far the best team in the league, if he can consistently get them to play like they did in the first half,” Hunter told The Commercial Appeal outside the visitor’s locker room. “I thought that’s the best they’ve probably looked in two months, and so I just wanted to let him know that.”

"I know it," Hardaway responded, nodding his head in agreement.

This was, coincidentally, the best two–way performance Memphis has put together since it beat Virginia back in December. That victory was highlighted by Virginia coach Tony Bennett’s seal of approval about how good these Tigers could be.

A lot has happened since then. But this win, the third in a row, reinforced that this team is finally headed back in the right direction. Whether it will be remembered as too late to salvage this program’s NCAA tournament hopes will be decided later.

A crucial road trip through the Dallas area to face SMU and North Texas in the next week awaits, followed by huge home games against Charlotte and Florida Atlantic. Those will dictate the future more than a revenge opportunity against Tulane can.

But given the storm this group seems to be emerging from, Sunday looked more like the first two months of this season than anything that had happened between now and then.

The ball was popping around the perimeter and the defense was disorienting and disruptive, particularly early when Memphis built a 25-6 lead by scoring 16 straight points and forcing a Green Wave of Tulane turnovers.

David Jones was scoring and dishing out assists and creating havoc within the Memphis press. Jahvon Quinerly was engaged and seemed to hit a shot or set someone up for one whenever Tulane looked capable of flipping the momentum. Nae’Qwan Tomlin’s activity set a tone early. Jordan Brown played his most effective minutes since the Tigers’ win at Missouri in the second game of the season. The rotation was down to nine players, another goal achieved after Hardaway conceded this week that he had to pare it down.

More than that, though, the positive vibes were back. Hardaway could talk in the past tense about the frustration Jones' teammates felt about him taking so many shots. Same goes for an apparently brutal film session that happened after Memphis came back late to beat Wichita State last weekend, when Hardaway showed the team mostly negative clips to demonstrate: “This is where we are . . . and this is where it could be.”

“We had to kind of reinvent the team,” Hardaway said, and then he explained what he meant.

First, Brown left the team. Then Tomlin joined the team. Then Caleb Mills got hurt. And then Brown returned to the team. It was, Quinerly noted, “a lot” for a roster that came together so late in the offseason.

“These guys are getting better every day at understanding who we are now and what we need to do,” Hardaway emphasized.

Memphis still faces a dire situation, however — one that really sinks in when it plays the way it did most of Sunday.

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It’d be a shame if these Tigers can’t play in the NCAA Tournament because of a two-week stretch in which the wheels completely fell off. They should be playing for seeding, not for their March Madness lives. Unfortunately, that is what they’re presented with this final month of the season because it went too long between games like this.

Games in which the lead ballooned to 25 points, never got below double digits again and featured an exclamation point when Quinerly weaved through the traffic of Tulane’s desperation press defense before finding Jonathan Pierre for an alley-oop dunk.

There was only a minute left by then, and Memphis fans then got to do something they hadn’t experienced in about two months. They could safely head for the exits before the final buzzer sounded, reassured that the team they thought they knew actually might be back again.

You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on X: @mgiannotto

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis basketball, Penny Hardaway emerge from the storm in Tulane win