Tigers’ Quinones realizing potential
Lester Quinones walked off the court for the final time in 2020 full of hope.
He and his Memphis teammates had just dodged what would have been the program's worst loss in nearly three years. With 10 minutes remaining, the Tigers found themselves down by a dozen points at home to South Florida. The Bulls, who finished the season 174th in Kenpom, was missing their best player Alexis Yetna.
Rather than flailing, folding and falling to .500, Memphis fought back and won the game. Quinones, who scored eight of the team's 10 points in the last five minutes, walked away from that come-from-behind effort confident the Tigers had turned a corner.
“I feel like those last (10) minutes was the kind of team nobody's seen all year,” the sophomore guard said on Dec. 29. “I hope that starts a spark this season for us to just take off from here and really lock in and be the team everybody's expecting us to be.”
Since then, nearly three months later, Memphis is on an 11-4 run. The top-seeded Tigers (17-8), who will take on second-seeded Boise State (19-8) on Thursday (8 p.m., ESPN) in Denton, Texas, are two wins away from a National Invitation Tournament title. And Quinones has emerged as a key cog in the wheel. Only, not exactly in the same way most would have guessed based on his reputation upon arriving in Memphis, despite his best efforts.
Quinones made a name for himself as a pinpoint marksman, averaging 24 points per game (38% from 3-point range) at IMG Academy the season before enrolling at Memphis. His shooting ability made him one of the top draws in the 2019 recruiting class and he has put up solid scoring numbers, averaging 10 points in 51 games (48 starts).
But Quinones, already one of the top on-ball defenders in the American Athletic Conference, is quickly becoming one of the more wellrounded players in the league. In Memphis' opening-round NIT win over Dayton last Saturday, the 6foot-5 New York native dropped 15 points and 10 rebounds to record his third double-double of the season. Two games earlier, in a win over UCF, Quinones' career-high 15 rebounds marked a season-high for the Tigers.
Since point guard Alex Lomax went down with an ankle injury, Quinones has elevated his allaround game, averaging 9.5 points, 7.2 rebounds (more than big men Moussa Cisse, Malcolm Dandridge and Deandre Williams during that stretch) and 1.3 assists. He leads the Tigers in points per possession (.939) and adjusted field goal percentage among backcourt players (52.7), and has the second-lowest turnover percentage (13.9) and the second-best plus/minus (+178).
Memphis coach Penny Hardaway has long believed Quinones could be “a walking triple-double,” if only he could overcome his instinct to score.
“I have to argue with him every day about how good he can be if he plays this way,” Hardaway said after
the win over Dayton. “He just won't buy into that all the time. He's worried about getting more shots up … and I think that
takes away from him being a guy that does it on all levels. Nobody can keep him off the glass.
“If he came in with that mindset every day and let everything else just come to him, he could put up huge numbers every game.”
Quinones admits he was slow to trust
Hardaway's opinion. But he's coming around and it continues to fill him with hope for the type of player he can become.
“He tells me all the time he feels like I'm one of the best offensive rebounders in the entire country,” Quinones said. “I mean, it is a tough job to do, just really
getting in there and banging and crashing with people all the time. But I told him I'm going to lock in and get that done — do what he wants me to do. I trust him.”
Reach sports writer Jason Munz at jason.munz@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @munzly.