Lomax shakes off scrutiny to roar Memphis back to life
This Memphis basketball season never felt as bleak as it did Tuesday night, right before coach Penny Hardaway thrust point guard Alex Lomax into dire circumstances.
South Florida was on a 21-4 run. It led by a dozen points with 10 minutes to go. And then suddenly everything changed. For Lomax. For Hardaway. For Memphis. Perhaps even for the rest of this winter.
Because within 36 seconds, Lomax intercepted a pass and turned it into a 3-point play. Within a minute the Memphis deficit had been cut in half.
Within five minutes, Lomax had two more steals and three assists. The last dish set up teammate Deandre Williams for a game-tying 3-pointer.
Memphis never trailed again, and hopefully Lomax will never forget again
how he triggered the Tigers' nail-biting, come-from-behind 58-57 win over USF at Fedexforum.
“I needed Alex to play like that,” Hardaway said. “That's the Alex I'm used to seeing since the Lester Middle School days, his East High School days. That's the way he used to will our teams to a win.”
The burden of being from Memphis
This harrowing triumph did not solve all of the problems facing Memphis. But it did seem to be a crucial demarcation as we head into the 2021 portion of the Tigers' schedule.
The way they've played through 10 games left them no choice but to resort to survival mode in order to salvage whatever's left of their preseason expectations. Whether that's a feasible way to make a NCAA Tournament run can wait for a later date.
But this mindset, brought on by unexpected and unsightly losses, prompted Hardaway to turn back to what he's most comfortable with, to the way he coached when the pressure wasn't so high, and the wins came easier, and the championships were a constant.
And so that meant implementing an offense he used before he got to Memphis, and several different full-court press defenses. And it meant turning back to Lomax in the biggest moment.
He's as much a part of Hardaway's unorthodox rise to this job as anyone. As is mentioned often on Memphis broadcasts, Lomax has played for Hardaway since the sixth grade, since Hardaway showed up at a Lester Middle School practice just to help out longtime friend and former high school rival, Desmond Merriweather.
But the part of the story that doesn't get mentioned enough is that Lomax was a central figure when Merriweather, stricken with the colon cancer that ultimately killed him in 2105, told Hardaway about their coaching destiny.
They were going to win three city championships at Lester, then win four state championships at East High, and then finally give Memphis basketball the national championship that has so long eluded the program.
They, in this instance, didn't mean just Hardaway and Merriweather. Lomax was to be on this whole ride, too.
It's a burden Lomax handled so well in high school. But it's a burden that's gotten harder under the scrutiny that comes with being a Memphis native who plays for the Tigers.
Hardaway's performance is the main target. As it should be for the head coach.
But Lomax seemed to catch more criticism than any other player. Maybe because of all the great Tiger point guards from Memphis before him. Maybe because this Memphis basketball team so badly needs a steady floor general.
Hardaway said it affected Lomax. And you could hear it in the regret dripping from Lomax's every word Tuesday, as he spoke of feeling like he let down the team by sitting out the Tulsa loss with an injured thumb that probably wasn't bad enough to render him useless in that game.
You could hear it when Lomax was asked if he felt the city had turned on him for playing poorly most of this season.
He declared that it was mostly just “people I used to beat by 30 and 40 every day in high school, and their nephews or aunties and uncles are still upset about that from things that I did from middle school to high school."
You could hear it how relieved he was just to feel like himself again.
“I knew for a fact that I had the Memphis Tiger fans cheering hard for me today just for my defensive effort,” Lomax said, “and I played like there was 18,000 in the gym.”
The spark Memphis badly needed
It should be noted, however, the Hardaway era nearly spiraled into the zone of bad puns Tuesday.
The lion sleeps tonight.
Memphis must have been lion to itself about this new offense.
Are the Tigers stuck on paws? Hardaway left himself open to all these jokes after changing his offense for at least the third time this season. He once again used assistant coach Cody Toppert's previous scheme as a human shield Monday, and then revealed he named an offense that still couldn't muster 60 points, “Lion.”
Lion actually looked better for stretches than whatever Memphis ran before. Using his big men on the elbows as distributors, Hardaway created more ball movement and a few more easy baskets. He just sounded more at ease, with the decisions he had to make and the shortened rotation he plans to use.
But when the Lion went into hibernation after halftime, it was Lomax who roared the Tigers back awake down the stretch. His frenetic energy created havoc, and fast breaks, and jump-started everything.
“I hope that sparks something on this team," sophomore Lester Quinones said, "because I feel like those last six minutes, we played like a team that nobody has seen all year."
So when did Lomax know Tuesday was like nothing he had seen from himself this year? It wasn't the final defensive stand, when he and sophomore D.J. Jeffries combined to thwart USF'S Caleb Murphy.
There was just a ball laying on the court because Williams had knocked it loose. Lomax wasn't the closest to it. But he was the first to dive, and he was the first to grab it. He was the first to have the wherewithal to pitch it ahead to Williams, who found Quinones for and-1 layup in transition.
It was just Lomax being Lomax again.
“I kind of just snapped out of it,” he said, and thank goodness for that.
You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter: @mgiannotto