Penny Hardaway growing as a head coach in his Memphis Tigers’ latest March Madness trip

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Memphis coach Penny Hardaway thrilled fans as an NBA player and showed his chops as a college recruiter in the early days of the transfer portal and name, image and likeness compensation for players.

His credentials as a basketball coach? Not among Hardaway’s best qualities to be mentioned first for the rare coach still with his own shoe line.

This March Madness, that may finally be changing in his seventh year at his alma mater. Credit last season’s disaster of a season.

“That fall that I took actually made me better,” Hardaway said. “It made the team better because I got better.”

As a result, Hardaway is the American Athletic Conference coach of the year. It’s the latest and maybe biggest answer to critics questioning whether he could actually coach games as well as he draws in talent. His Tigers mobbed him at practice when told of Hardaway’s win and joined the celebration with a big grin. The team followed it up by adding the AAC Tournament title on Sunday.

The Tigers go into the NCAA Tournament as the No. 5 seed in the West Region, playing 12 seed Colorado State on Friday in Seattle. It’s the program’s highest NCAA Tournament seeding since 2009, right before John Calipari bolted for Kentucky and a year after the Tigers lost in the national championship game.

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“Growth as a coach, growth as a person, my faith, again, like I say,” Hardaway said after the tournament title win. “Through the storm, that was a huge storm last year, you know, losing this game, the first round at the tournament, my mother having throat cancer and just really just going through it. To be here now, happy, winning a regular season and the conference championship, man, I feel blessed and grateful.”

Hardaway hoisted the AAC regular-season hardware with Memphis — a team almost totally rebuilt from a disappointing season -– and cut down the nets on their home floor to celebrate.

“It means a lot because I’ve grown a lot,” Hardaway said winning that league title. “I didn’t feel like I had it all together at one point.”

When hired in March 2018, Hardaway was seen as the favorite son and savior of a program that had languished under predecessor Tubby Smith. Hardaway has won the NIT, been to the NCAA Tournament twice and finally has a conference championship. The accomplishments so far are more significant given what happendd a year ago.

Preseason promise and hopes of dominating the American Athletic Conference came crashing down. The Tigers finished tied for fifth, dealt with internal problems and were eliminated in a first-round loss to Wichita State in the conference tournament.

That left Memphis not playing somewhere in the postseason for the first time in four years.

“The bottom fell out,” Hardaway said, “and there was nothing I could do about it.”

So, Hardaway changed everything. Coaching staff, the roster, his own approach to coaching. He acknowledged that he was “relying on too many people.”

“I had to learn a lot, and that growth this year was what I needed,” Hardaway said. “It’s just a great feeling.”

He loaded up Memphis’ non-conference schedule and recorded early victories over defending national champion UConn and then-No. 7 Michigan State. The Tigers beat then-No. 21 Missouri and No. 10 Clemson before going 16-2 in the American.

In some circles, Hardaway was considered a good AAU coach who won high school titles. There was question of whether Hardaway could transform from a great player to leading a team and take the Tigers back to the program’s former glory, which features a trio of Final Four appearances.

“Penny’s a laid-back coach,” said senior guard Tyrese Hunter, who suffered a left foot injury in the conference tournament semifinal against Tulane. “I think him kind of stepping out of that, getting on us more, helped us throughout this whole season.”

Whether it was the growing experience or the shocks of last season, Hardaway seems to have grasped some of the nuances of the job. Center Moussa Cisse agreed with Hunter that Hardaway holds players more accountable now.

“He holds me to a higher standard, so I got to match that,” Cisse said. “So I would say that’s the difference. He really coaches everybody, like, the same and then he gives us, like -- what do you call it? Energy. So that’s probably the difference.”

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