Winning championships.”

As Memphis coach Penny Hardaway left AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami on Saturday, he reminisced on a valuable lesson he learned from former Miami Heat coach Pat Riley.

“That toughness. No excuses, just get it done,” Hardaway recalled.

The narrow loss to No. 19 Texas Tech still stung. It was a game the Tigers (3-4) let slip away in the final seven minutes, and a second failed attempt for Hardaway to notch his first marquee victory.

“Right now we have a team full of guys who want to make excuses, and it’s uncomfortable for them to just go do it,” Hardaway added.

Memphis led Texas Tech for 32 minutes, held a 13-point second-half lead, an edge in rebounding, and forced the Red Raiders into 17 turnovers. It wasn’t enough. They played even on the road at LSU last month for the entire second half — and 13 minutes of the first half — while making 10 shots from 3-point range. That wasn’t enough, either. “We take tough shots,” Hardaway said. “We take bad shots. We get lazy on defense sometimes. We don’t sprint back. We start missing free throws. Everything starts to spiral downward, and we can’t seem to find that one stop that we need, and we can’t seem to find a South Dakota State (7-2) at Memphis (3-4)

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basket.”

The Tigers’ most recent loss exemplified that, as Texas Tech shot 57 percent from the floor in the second half and sent Memphis scrambling on offense with 11 turnovers.

“It seems like we start deviating from everything we had for the first 30 minutes or 35 minutes of the game, and all of a sudden we decide to go south,” Hardaway added.

The coach is still searching for answers to the recurring “downward spiral,” but said part of the reason for the late-game struggles is his team’s youth, and challenged his five seniors to be more of a “calming spirit.”

That challenge begins with veteran Jeremiah Martin, the Tigers’ leading scorer from a season ago, who missed all five of his shot attempts during the final seven minutes of Saturday’s loss.

Martin said after the game that much of the team’s second-half struggles this season are his own responsibility, admitting that he hasn’t finished games to his full potential.

“Even when you get a lead late, you still have to keep playing,” Martin said. “Play until the end. We just have to find ways to win, and it goes back to my leadership and the way I’ve been playing.”

But neither Martin nor Hardaway have lost sight of the big picture, which is making sure the Tigers are peaking at the beginning of conference play.

“It’s progress,” Hardaway said. “... I will never blame a kid for anything. But, the things that we are showing them, and the things that we’re doing, they are trying to accomplish those for as long as they can — as we see it, that’s anywhere from 28-30 minutes a game.”

The other 10 minutes, Hardaway called a “toss-up.”

“It doesn’t feel good at all,” Hardaway pointed out, to come close to an uplifting victory, only to have it slip away.

And now, with a matchup against No. 7 Tennessee and conference play looming, he knows Memphis can’t afford a 10-minute lapse in play if it wants to be ready by January.

“When you come (to the Miami Heat), you’re going to buy in, or else you’re going to leave,” Haraway said. “At our school, we’re getting to the point where you’re going to have to buy in, or you’re not going to play. It doesn’t matter how good you are offensively, you have to buy into the whole. That’s when you start winning games and winning championships.”