If not now for Hardaway and Memphis, then when?
If not now, then when?
Thanks to the scheduling oddities created by the coronavirus pandemic, the Memphis basketball team has reached that portion of its season.
If the Tigers can't look more cohesive starting Thursday against SMU at Fedexforum, with eight games in 23 days looming, when will they get it together?
If the Tigers' new “Lion” offense isn't clicking by this week, after 17 days between games afforded them a de facto training camp to begin 2021, when will they look better?
If the Tigers can't carry out a long winning streak beginning now, after such an uneven opening 10 games, it will be a matter of when – not if – their already diminished NCAA Tournament hopes completely vanish.
If coach Penny Hardaway can't figure out how to turn his under-performing team around, when does he admit he needs help?
These are the stakes facing the program in the coming weeks. Hardaway's job doesn't hang in the balance after signing that five-year contract extension last month, but perhaps the manner in which he approaches the job should.
What we're seeing out on the court, the players and lineups and strategy, they're all in Hardaway's image at this point. He recruited every single person on the roster. He scrapped the offense that was installed preseason and instead went with a scheme he's more comfortable using. He is the architect of the sturdy Memphis defense that prevented this season and last season from veering totally off course due to his anemic offense.
It's all on him, and he made it so. This is the moment Memphis fans feared when Hardaway was hired in March 2018, the moment when they are forced to scrutinize and criticize the city legend they love. It's a moment Hardaway said he wasn't scared of when he took the gig, even though it's a moment Larry Finch reckoned with when he went from a city legend to Memphis basketball coach.
But this is nonetheless where the Hardaway era gets tricky, because it's time for results in the games, or it's time for change.
It's not necessarily as easy as simply hiring a former head coach to be on the bench with Hardaway, a common plea made to former coach Josh Pastner when his recruiting success didn't translate to enough wins.
Hiring the right former head coach, particularly one with an expertise in in
stalling a half-court offense, would be a boon. But Hardaway's actions suggest he agrees with this in theory. That's why he tried to add coaching legend Larry Brown to his initial staff at Memphis. That's why he initially allowed assistant coach Cody Toppert to install an offense Hardaway later admitted he hadn't mastered.
But a former head coach, or an offensive guru, won't make much of a difference if Hardaway doesn't trust that person. His first three years as a head coach have proven that he still really only trusts himself. It's paid off on the recruiting trail. It's paid off at the ticket office and in his dealings with the community. But it's been a bumpy ride when it comes to the product on the court.
This season, Hardaway bet on himself again. He implemented the offense he used at the middle school and high school levels. He hired a longtime friend for the assistant coaching vacancy left behind by Mike Miller. He continued to make substitutions and lineup decisions like they were hockey line changes, without much continuity in terms of a rotation. The way in which Hardaway took control of this team means how the rest of this season plays out will either bolster the belief in his coaching, or it will cast even more doubt over him than the initial concerns that accompanied these initial losses.
Ending the program's NCAA Tournament drought was and is the expectation this year, even if the Tigers haven't looked like a team worthy of the NCAA Tournament to date. Falling short of that would require Hardaway to admit he's fallen short.
Perhaps that's already happening, an unforeseen benefit of having two games in a row postponed due to COVID-19 issues at Temple and UCF right before an already scheduled nine-day break.
Perhaps this long lay-off is exactly what Memphis and Hardaway needed for perspective. A break before the most crucial part of the schedule, with two games against conference favorite Houston, two games against conference contenders like SMU and Wichita State and UCF, as well as a rematch with Tulsa, all on the horizon. "I expect improvement," Hardaway said ahead of this week's games.
But if nothing has changed, if the first 10 games of the season were simply a precursor to how the final 17 games will play out, when will it?