Can Hardaway solve Tigers’ rebounding issues?
For Memphis basketball, its close win at Tulane Sunday was not only a disaster avoided, it was also a moment of realization for coach Penny Hardaway.
After Memphis allowed 18 offensive rebounds at Houston, 19 against ECU and 19 more at Tulane, Hardaway suggested he might have a solution to the Tigers’ ongoing struggles on the glass.
“I saw what’s happening tonight,” Hardaway said Sunday. “The guys — they are shooting threes — and the guys are running in to get the rebound, but the ball is bouncing right back out to the guys that shot it.”
Over the last three games, Memphis’ opponents have attempted 78 3-point shots, making only 19 of those tries. The Tigers are allowing conference opponents to grab an offensive rebound on 38 percent of their attempts, which is last in the AAC.
defensive and special teams coordinators. He then replaced them with a staff that, at least on paper, is better than the one he lost.
What’s impressive about Memphis’ new assistants
Lembo, for instance, was a head coach for 15 years at Lehigh, Elon and Ball State and compiled a 112-65 overall record. When he went 10-3 at Ball State in 2013, many assumed he’d be coaching in a Power Five conference sooner rather than later.
Now, he’s an overqualified special teams coordinator at Memphis.
Never mind that Fuller had defenses ranked among the top 30 in the country the past two seasons. He just left Marshall, a school that beat Memphis the last five times they played as Conference USA members a decade ago, to be here.
Memphis, simply put, is a better destination for coaches than Marshall now.
“What attracted me to the job is they’ve obviously been really successful the last three years,” Fuller said.
Johns, meanwhile, had top-35 offenses four different times as an offensive coordinator at Indiana and Texas Tech.
John Simon, the new wide receivers coach and recruiting coordinator, left a job as Arizona State’s associate head coach to be at Memphis with Norvell, his former college teammate at Louisiana Tech.
Deke Adams, the new defensive line coach, came here after serving in a similar role at North Carolina and South Carolina.
Kevin Clune, the new linebackers coach, was Oregon State’s defensive coordinator before spending last season at Memphis as a defensive analyst. His initial impression?
“I was very surprised by the level of talent,” he said. “This is supposed to be a Group of Five team, but there was some guys on this team I would love to have at some of the other places I’ve been.”
Only Tony Tokarts, who Norvell promoted from graduate assistant to tight ends coach ahead of the Birmingham Bowl, seems to have taken a path to this staff that would have made sense back in 2011.
Norvell, obviously, is the central character in all this progress. His decision to remain at Memphis for a fourth season, and his success the past three years, is what brought all these coaches to town.
Whether this more-accomplished staff is more successful than the coaches that left remains an open question.
Unlike last year, when Norvell hired several coaches he was familiar with from his days at Arizona State, he hasn’t previously worked with many of his new hires.
That they’re here in Memphis, though, is a development few could have imagined not all that long ago.
“We’re on the verge of doing something special here at Memphis,” Norvell said Saturday. “We’ve done some great things. We’ve been able to build a tremendous reputation nationally for how our football team plays and what we do, and the things that we have accomplished. But we feel this is the group that’s going to help continue to help elevate where we’re wanting to go.”