How the UT Vols vs. Memphis basketball series returned
Not long ago, Jordan Bowden fired up YouTube and went searching for a decade-old Tennessee basketball game.
He easily found what he was looking for: The 2008 Tennessee vs. Memphis game when the No. 1 Tigers hosted No. 2 Volunteers in an absurd rivalry clash that Tennessee won to claim the top spot in the nation for the first time in program history.
Bowden saw what the in-state meeting looked like at its peak. Now, the junior guard from Knoxville and the rest of his Tennessee teammates are set to get their first experience in the rivalry on Saturday (noon ET, ESPN2).
“Everybody knows you have two instate schools that have had great success in basketball,” Vols coach Rick Barnes said Thursday before No. 4 Tennessee (7-1) faces Memphis (5-4) in front of a sellout crowd at FedEx Forum.
The path to reviving the once dormant series started when Barnes took over at Tennessee in 2015 and Tubby Smith arrived at Memphis in 2016.
The longtime friends connected, expressing a desire to renew the series that stopped in 2013 after some epic battles in the previous 25 meetings.
“Everybody in the state knows and talks about it,” Barnes said. “It had been a rivalry. When I got here, people asked about that game. Every time we went to Memphis for Big Orange Caravan, everybody said, ‘Is there ever a chance we can start playing a game again?’”
Both coaches had a desire to see the series return. But they faced early obstacles. Both coaches were settling into new programs and figuring out the lay of the land. They also inherited previous scheduling commitments that prevented either program from adding the game back quickly.
But the return was inevitable — a matter of sorting out time and details.
“It took time to get it because of where we were with our scheduling,” Barnes said.
UT and Memphis reached an agreement initially in November 2017, scheduling a home-and-home series. In February, they added a third game in Nashville.
In March, within weeks of Smith’s firing and Penny Hardaway’s hiring at Memphis, the schools formally announced the series.
Tennessee plays at Memphis first — Saturday’s game at FedEx Forum. Memphis returns to Thompson-Boling Arena on a date yet to be determined in the 2019-20 season. The contract ends with a neutral site meeting at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on either Dec. 18 or 20, 2020.
Barnes has hopes of turning the Nashville meeting into a statewide event featuring more of the state’s college basketball programs.
“We have a lot of people out there (in Memphis),” Barnes said. “Just like if you want to go to Nashville. We are the state university. We want to make sure we can cover the state as much as we can for our alumni.”
The teams haven’t met since January 2013, when Memphis came to UT and extended its winning streak in the series to three. The Vols hold a 14-11 edge in the series, which featured a single game in 1969 before the schools started playing annually in 1988.
UT and Memphis met for the next 14 seasons before a three-season break. The series returned in 2005-06 and carried through eight more seasons before it fell off after the 2012-13 season.
It is back now after a five-season hiatus, the product of early talks between Barnes and Smith that led to a series that instead will feature Barnes and Hardaway.
“Penny Hardaway is doing a great job,” Barnes said. “He’s got his guys playing really hard and they get up and down the floor as quick as anybody we’ve played. They really play really hard and you have to admire the way they’ve gotten better. They’re playing their best basketball right now.
“(Our guys) know every time we play now, they need to embrace (that) teams are going to come after you. I think if you embrace it, you can get better through this.”