Memphis basketball got its revenge vs. FAU. Next up: Create some March Madness | Giannotto

The ending is worth remembering because there were 45.6 seconds separating Memphis basketball from revenge — and revenge was suddenly morphing into déjà vu.

Nae’Qwan Tomlin had just thrown the ball away. Florida Atlantic had the ball with a chance to tie a game it had trailed by double digits less than three minutes earlier. Penny Hardaway admitted to thinking, “Here we go again.” The anguished faces in the striped crowd of blue and white at FedExForum screamed, ‘Here we go again.” Most everyone who watched the Tigers’ NCAA tournament dreams slip away against FAU 11 months ago must have had that same feeling.

Just not, apparently, the players on the court.

Consider it another quirk of the transfer portal. Nobody who played for Memphis on the defining defensive stand that secured Sunday’s 78-74 win over FAU was even on the team last year. In this moment, though, it was hard to tell.

“They wanted the game so badly,” Hardaway said.

And so it was that Jahvon Quinerly, Jaykwon Walton and Nick Jourdain took turns hounding FAU until Brandon Weatherspoon took a contested 3-pointer that clanked off the back rim. Then it was David Jones leaping over and through FAU’s 7-foot-1 center, Vladislav Goldin, to grab the rebound.

He flexed to the camera for effect because the game was effectively over.

“I had to,” Jones explained. “They was talking too much.”

The talk a week ago was that this Memphis season appeared dead to rights. Now, the Tigers (20-8, 9-6) have beaten the AAC’s second-place team for the second game in a row. A day after more distraction arrived in the form of a university investigation into allegations of academic misconduct involving center Malcolm Dandridge — and facing Goldin, the tallest player Memphis has played all season — this nonetheless looked like a team to be reckoned with once more.

So here we go again?

Is a Hardaway-coached team coming together just in time to play its best basketball now that March is almost here?

It has happened the past three years. It’s harder to say for sure with this unpredictable team, which has endured more setbacks in league play than it anticipated, but it took an emphatic step forward in this matchup of preseason conference favorites.

Memphis couldn’t undo all the damage it did the past couple of months in one afternoon, but its performance Sunday made one thing clear. This group, even without Dandridge, still could figure out a way to get into the NCAA tournament. Hardaway is even holding out hope that if the Tigers win out the last three games of the regular season, they can get back into the at-large bid conversation in March.

However unlikely that seems right now, the conviction with which he said it was encouraging after all the missteps of the past five weeks.

GIANNOTTO: Memphis basketball's latest drama must be a call to action for Penny Hardaway

“They’re really buying into scheme, and with the scheme, they’re bringing the energy and the effort. And when we do that, we can win any game,” Hardaway said. “We didn’t do that in Texas and I don’t know why, but we’re doing it now.

“At some point after Dallas,” he continued, referencing that ugly loss at SMU on Feb. 18, “it clicked for this team to be one unit instead of individuals and it feels good coaching this team now when everybody is unified and together.”

They all showed up in full force Sunday, perhaps ignited by a motivational video featuring clips from FAU’s NCAA tournament wins last season over Memphis and Kansas State that was shown to the players right before they took the court.

If they needed another reminder, the refs even awarded FAU a timeout instead of calling a jump ball early in the second half — a reversal of the late-game sequence that has bothered Hardaway and every Memphis basketball fan since March.

But the difference between now and perhaps every other game Memphis played this season — even when it stormed through nonconference play — was Nae’Qwan Tomlin. He’s a player who wasn’t at Memphis last season but nonetheless had “a personal vendetta” just like his teammates, according to Hardaway, as a member of that Kansas State team that lost to FAU in the Elite Eight.

Tomlin responded with his best performance since arriving at Memphis in late December, steadying the Tigers early when they weren’t hitting shots, delivering a monster dunk to ignite the announced crowd of 13,510 in the second half, and swarming on defense to the tune of three steals, two blocks and countless other energy plays that kept FAU from finding any sort of consistent rhythm.

It conjured up images of former Memphis forward DeAndre Williams for some, a notion Williams gave his stamp of approval on social media afterward.

You might say here we go again. It's March and the Tigers just might have a little madness left in them.

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 got its FAU revenge. Next up: Create March Madness