Memphis Basketball Signals It's Content With Mediocrity By Bringing Penny Hardaway Back For Another Season

There may not be another person in the history of college athletics who has received the benefit of the doubt in a more obvious manner or for a longer period of time than Penny Hardaway has at Memphis. 

When you're a former four-time NBA All-Star, one of the greatest players in program history, and carry a status around the city comparable to Elvis Presley's, your leash is always going to be longer, but it has never been clearer in his tenure that things have run their course between Penny and the Tigers.

Nevertheless, five days after Hardaway and Memphis wrapped up the program's worst season of the 21st century, the Tigers have decided to bring him back next season, which will be his ninth in charge.

Memphis went 13-19 overall this past season while winning just eight games in the American Athletic Conference, a bad league that has managed just one bid into the NCAA Tournament for the second straight year. Prior to beating Tulane in overtime in the regular-season finale, Memphis dropped seven straight games and finished 135th in the NET rankings.

Bad seasons happen, and this year was certainly one of them, but for the Memphis program to lean on that excuse alongside Hardaway's incredibly average résumé sends a message that the program is fine with being mediocre for at least one more season.

Penny Hardaway is back for what will be his ninth season at Memphis. (Wesley Hale-Imagn Images)

Prior to this season's disaster, Hardaway led the Tigers to at least 20 wins in each of the previous seven campaigns, but has exactly one NCAA Tournament win to show for it. With Memphis missing out on March Madness this year, Hardaway's teams have now failed to reach the NCAA Tournament more times (5) than they have punched their ticket (3).

Any coach of a team with any semblance of serious standards lost in the Round of 64 in 2023, failed to make the tournament in 2024, lost in the Round of 64 again in 2025, and then went 13-19 the following year would be out of a job. 

Anyone with an ounce of common sense recognizes that if Penny Hardaway wasn't the coach in question here, the Tigers would be looking for a new head coach right now. 

Penny Hardaway has won just one NCAA Tournament game in his tenure at Memphis (Chris Day/The Commercial Appeal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)

The university owing Hardaway a reported $6 million if it parted ways with him this offseason certainly plays a role in the decision-making here as well, but in a business where wins and losses are the only things that matter, Hardaway losing six more games than he won this season feels like the ideal time for the two parties to amicably split.

And yes, the entire world is aware Memphis won 29 games a season ago, beat three Top 20 teams during that run, and won both the AAC regular season title and conference tournament title. For anyone holding onto those accomplishments, while that same team blew a second-half lead to Colorado State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament that same season, is admitting that the standard for Memphis basketball has significantly dropped.

Neutral college basketball fans and the romantic sports fan in general should be pulling for Hardaway to succeed at Memphis. A former All-American player returning to his school and a city that's constantly disrespected, and putting together some NCAA Tournament runs over the course of a 20-plus-year career on the sideline would quite literally be the epitome of college athletics.

Instead, the expectations at Memphis have now reached a new low point of the 21st century. Hardaway will be coaching for his job next season in hopes of reaching year 10, and the roster put together will be in a do-or-die situation from day one.

But who knows, maybe Hardaway and his new-look staff will be up for it. Perhaps a 17th different iteration of assistant coaches with the expectation of immediately turning things around will be the trick in 2026.