How returning Tigers feel about team’s future
Lester Quinones raised his eyebrows, smiled and nodded.
Reality was setting in as he showed up Thursday at the new University of Memphis Recreation Center's plaza for a campus-area cleanup on Earth Day.
His status as one of the Memphis basketball team's few remaining familiar faces had taken another step toward crystalizing.
“Yeah, one of the OGS,” said Quinones, a relative elder statesman who will be a third-year player in 2021-22. “I saw a meme the other day that was just me and Malcolm (Dandridge) here out of that recruiting class that we had.”
In the next breath, with an unmistakably resolute tone, Quinones shifted the conversation toward the future. While the Tigers are just two years removed from the high hopes and promise that accompanied that No. 1 recruiting class, only two players of the seven-member group remain.
There also are holes on the coaching staff that need filled following the departures of assistant Tony Madlock and strength coach Darby Rich.
And yet, for as much as the landscape in the program has changed – and as much as it still could change with Moussa Cisse's future uncertain – the suddenly elder statesmen agree big things are well within their grasp.
“For me and Malcolm and everybody else who stayed, we're ready to start something special here,” Quinones said. “The NIT championship is a start to it, but I feel like we're trying to start something bigger than that.”
If the Tigers are to build on a season that saw them win 14 of their last 17 games and claim the program's second National Invitation Tournament title, they'll have to do it with a roster that has undergone a rapid makeover.
Since suffering an exodus of players that included Boogie Ellis, D.J. Jeffries, Damion Baugh and Jordan Nesbitt, Memphis has added transfers Tyler Harris, Chandler Lawson and Earl Timberlake – and it could get add at least one more.
Harris announced his move back to the Tigers minutes before Hampton transfer Davion Warren (whose signing was announced by Memphis last week) officially declared he was backing off his commitment to Memphis.
Joining Harris, Lawson and Timberlake will be high school signees Johnathan Lawson, Josh Minott, John Camden and Sam Onu before next season.
While the additions will help, fourth-year guard Alex Lomax said the team's foundation is as solid as it has ever been under coach Penny Hardaway.
“We're older,” Lomax said. “Guys have way more experience. Some of the guys that are coming in are older, (too).
They've got good experience. It's going to be a good, experienced team, as in just playing basketball and being battle-tested. We have a lot of guys that have been through the trenches before and they can play ball. So, I feel like it'll be better for everybody mindset-wise and from a maturity standpoint.”
Hardaway has expressed confidence in what the Tigers are returning and what they've added during the young offseason, which has sparked a symbiotic cycle within the program.
“It for sure helps settle us down when he has confidence in us,” said Landers Nolley II, this past season's leading scorer. “Doing a whole year with us and us learning the system, putting in the work, it gives us confidence and it gives him confidence in us.”
Reach sports writer Jason Munz at jason.munz@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @munzly.