Memphis basketball has a new mission. Give Caleb Mills his 'special' season | Giannotto

The way Penny Hardaway described the halftime scene afterward, they were all together as Caleb Mills came to grips with what had just happened. The entire Memphis basketball team watched him bawl his eyes out in a hallway at Tulsa’s Reynolds Center Thursday night because his left knee had been injured so badly, the streaming broadcast on ESPN+ wouldn’t even show the replay.

There were 2 minutes, 19 seconds remaining in the first half when Mills drove down the baseline, only to experience a scary, non-contact fall that tempered any excitement from the dramatic manner in which Memphis held off Tulsa in its 75-72 win to open American Athletic Conference play.

Hardaway knew quickly, as he helped carry Mills off the floor, that this was bad. A doctor from Tulsa surmised it was a patella injury. But the emotional carnage — that’s what stuck with Hardaway as he recounted all of this on the radio with Tigers play-by-play voice Dave Woloshin.

“He came here to turn his last year into a special one,” Hardaway said, “and if that’s the last play of his career, going for a layup in college, it’s just . . . "

His voice trailed off. Woloshin finished the thought.

“That’d be terrible,” he said.

It’d be heartbreaking, really.

But it does add another layer to the mission these Tigers have embarked upon — a quest to make a run to the second weekend of March Madness (or perhaps beyond) for the first time in 15 years.

They have to complete what Mills set out to accomplish. They need to deliver the special season that now appears to have been cut short for him.

Mills has played at three schools, but never in the NCAA Tournament. He had become one of the leaders of this new-look roster, having arrived on campus this past spring, earlier than most of the team’s other high-profile transfers. He had asked to come off the bench and accepted his role as a defensive stopper on the perimeter, sacrificing some scoring for the betterment of the group.

As hard as it will be to replace him, maybe his absence can serve as the unfortunate motivational boost 15th-ranked Memphis needs after three wins in a row over inferior opponents that were way too close for comfort. Maybe it’s the unfortunate reminder that none of this can be taken for granted, not with a team that still has a star in David Jones and an emerging 6-foot-10 sidekick in late addition Nae'Qwan Tomlin.

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The fear as league play begins, or at least until Memphis plays Florida Atlantic on Feb. 25, is that complacency could set in while the Tigers navigate the diluted landscape of the AAC.

Lose more than two or three games in this version of the AAC, particularly against teams not named Florida Atlantic, and the improved NCAA Tournament seed this program badly wants (and currently deserves) could turn abruptly into the middling position that ultimately prevented the Tigers from making a run to the second weekend the past two seasons.

That would be a shame, given what they achieved in their daunting nonconference schedule. But they've now flirted with a disastrous result against Vanderbilt, Austin Peay and Tulsa. The first two could be explained away because they surrounded the holiday break. Even this one felt justifiable, what with the gravity of Mills' injury.

But the Tigers nonetheless squandered a 14-point halftime lead against Tulsa. The Golden Hurricane knocked down a bunch of 3-pointers, while Memphis turned the ball over and forced bad shots at an alarming rate against the zone defense. Hardaway’s team allowed seven points in 17 seconds in the final minute, aided by two straight costly turnovers from guard Jahvon Quinerly.

Suddenly, the score was tied. Suddenly, it seemed as if the Tigers could lose more than Mills.

"The only way you do that is you give it to them," Hardaway said. "They made the shots, but a couple of those shots we just gave to them.”

But just as suddenly, Quinerly sank a 3-pointer from the wing on a broken play with 4 seconds to go. Tulsa’s last-second response rimmed out and Memphis commenced about as muted a celebration as you’ll see for a game that ended with a shot like this one.

Quinerly, about an hour before he hit his game winner, was right there when Mills landed so awkwardly on the court. Though it initially appeared Mills slipped on a wet spot, Hardaway insisted Mills' knee had given out when he attempted to explode off the floor.

Quinerly immediately covered his mouth as Mills’ legs flailed through the air. He put his hands over his head, clinging to his hair before kneeling at midcourt while Hardaway, trainers and doctors carried his teammate to the back.

Quinerly had flashbacks to the serious knee injury he suffered almost two years ago, until another thought eventually overcame him, and the rest of the team.

“We wanted to win that game for him,” he said.

After what they experienced together Thursday, why stop with one?

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 has new mission after Caleb Mills' knee injury