Needing to make the NCAA Tournament to put last season’s collapse in the rearview mirror, and stuck in a terrible conference that currently offers zero Quadrant 1 opportunities, Memphis coach Penny Hardaway created an aggressive non-league schedule designed to allow his Tigers to build a resume that the committee would deem at-large worthy on Selection Sunday.
The only catch?
They had to survive it — specifically a trip to the Maui Invitational that presented games against three teams that are all ranked in the top 20 of the AP Top 25 poll (UConn, Michigan State, Auburn), a total of four games against SEC teams (Auburn, Mississippi State, Missouri, Ole Miss) and road games against two ACC teams (Clemson, Virginia).
That’s a top-five non-league schedule featuring 13 games.
The Tigers were favored in the betting markets in only six of those contests, underdogs in seven. In other words, this could’ve gone terribly — especially for a team that returned just one scholarship player.
But it didn’t go terribly.
Instead, Memphis completed its non-league schedule Saturday with an 87-70 victory over Ole Miss inside FedExForum that pushed the Tigers’ record to 10-3 with eight wins falling inside the first two quadrants.
Nobody else has more than six wins inside the first two quadrants.
That alone doesn’t mean Memphis has the best body of work in the sport, or even the best wins in the sport. But it does highlight that nobody has as many quality wins as the Tigers, who are now clearly the favorites in the AAC despite not being picked that way in the preseason by the league’s coaches.
“Just an unbelievable run,” Hardaway said, “to be 10-3 at the end of this [non-conference] schedule.”
It’s unreasonable to disagree.
Considering everything written above — most notably that Memphis already had more wins inside the first two quadrants than anybody else in the sport even before Saturday’s victory over Ole Miss — you might be wondering why the Tigers aren’t already in the AP poll or weren’t in Saturday morning’s CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings.
If so, fair question.
The answer is Arkansas State.
Twenty-one days ago, on a Sunday afternoon, Memphis hosted Arkansas State and lost 85-72. To be clear, Arkansas State is top 100 in the NET, the best team in the Sun Belt and led by Brian Hodgson, the 37-year-old, second-year coach who is on track to eventually join his old boss, Alabama’s Nate Oats, at the power-conference level. The Red Wolves are NOT bad — but they are 98th in the NET. And when you lose at home to a team that’s 98th in the NET, that’s a Quadrant 3 loss. And that Quadrant 3 loss, combined with last weekend’s 79-66 loss at home to Mississippi State, combined with some not-so-great computer numbers, was enough to reasonably remove Memphis from most human rankings just before Christmas, in part because literally no team in last Monday’s AP poll had a Quadrant 3 loss on the resume.
But the convincing win over Ole Miss should push the Tigers back in.
Again, they’re now 10-3 with eight victories coming inside the first two quadrants. Again, nobody else — not even No. 1 Tennessee or No. 2 Auburn — has more than six wins inside the first two quadrants. So, yeah, the Q3 loss to Arkansas State is a drag — and it likely always will be. But, based on the strength of the wins and entire body of work, I’ve moved Memphis to No. 18 in Sunday morning’s updated Top 25 And 1.
After AAC coaches voted the Tigers second in the league’s preseason poll, they’re currently 35 spots better than any other AAC team at KenPom.com and expected to win the conference’s regular-season title by multiple games. If they do it, they’ll cruise into the NCAA Tournament and receive the type of seed that should set them up to advance in the bracket, all because Penny Hardaway tested his players with a tough non-league schedule and then watched them pass the test impressively.
Top 25 And 1 rankings
In: Memphis
Out: San Diego State
