No tourney ban for Memphis hoops
The NCAA put the Memphis men’s basketball program on three years of probation with a public reprimand and a fine Tuesday, but declined to punish Tigers coach Penny Hardaway or hand down an NCAA Tournament ban.
The NCAA had accused Memphis of four Level I and two Level II violations, considered the most serious infractions, and a total of seven alleged violations including lack of institutional control, head coach responsibility and failure to monitor.
The Independent Accountability Review Panel put the blame on Memphis failing to monitor Hardaway as an athletics booster or educate him better after hiring him as the Tigers’ coach. The panel also ruled Memphis provided impermissible benefits of meals to athletes and publicity benefits to recruits.
The panel also ruled Memphis failed to cooperate with the investigation by delaying handing over requested documents but decided these were Level II and III violations.
Memphis will be fined $5,000 plus 0.25% of its average men’s basketball budget — based on the average of the program’s last three total budgets. Probation starts Tuesday and runs to Sept. 26, 2025. Memphis also must send at least one member of its Office of Legal Counsel to two NCAA Regional Rules Seminars and inform all prospect men’s basketball recruits in writing that the Tigers are on probation.
The lack of a tournament ban or suspension for Hardaway is key for a program that just ended an NCAA Tournament drought in March with its first berth since 2014.
The NCAA investigation started in May 2019 and continued into February 2021, with an amended notice of allegations sent to Memphis in July 2021.
IARP administrative officer Hugh Fraser Fraser said in a news conference that the pandemic was a contributing factor slowing down the investigation.
The probe began over the recruitment and the short time that James Wiseman spent at Memphis after receiving $11,500 from Hardaway in 2017. That’s when Hardaway was coach at East High School in Memphis. He wasn’t hired as Memphis’ coach until March 2018, and Wiseman committed to the Tigers in November 2018.
The NCAA originally ruled the money wasn’t allowed because Hardaway was a booster for the program.
The former NBA All-Star gave $1 million in 2008 to his alma mater for the university’s sports hall of fame named for Hardaway. The IARP noted Hardaway had been helping people in Memphis since first going to the NBA in 1993.
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