The Memphis men's basketball team is heading to the Bahamas this week to compete in the Baha Mar Championship, a four team tournament that includes Purdue, Texas Tech, and Wake Forest.
The tropical mid-season tournaments have been kind to the Tigers the past two years, as they placed second at both the Battle 4 Atlantis and the Maui Invitational, amassing wins over Michigan, No. 19 Arkansas, No. 2 UConn and Michigan State during those events. This year though, the Tigers are limping into the Baha Mar Championship, as they have lost two straight, most recently a convincing 92-78 loss at home to UNLV.
“I’m trying, along with the staff, to just go to war every day and find five guys, find seven guys, find eight guys that can just run through a wall,” head coach Penny Hardaway said after the loss to UNLV. “Not even shoot well or play well, just fight.”
The Tigers will want to figure things out quickly. Their first opponent is the best team in the land, No.1 Purdue, who are led by Preseason National Player of the Year Braden Smith and Preseason All-American Trey Kaufman-Renn.
In the three year Braden Smith era, where Purdue has gotten two 1-seeds, two Sweet 16 appearances and a runner-up finish in the 2024 National Championship, the Boilermakers have only lost three non-conference games.
“It’s not about X’s and O’s, it’s just about fight. Just compete and fight every minute, every second that you’re on the floor, and we can work with that,” Hardaway said when looking ahead to the challenge of playing Purdue.
After the Purdue game, the path will not get much easier for Memphis. The Tigers will either face No. 15 Texas Tech and First Team All-American J.T. Toppin or Wake Forest, who took No. 7 Michigan to overtime in Detroit a week ago.
This tournament is loaded, especially in the frontcourt, which happens to be the biggest weakness of the Tigers.
The Tigers will need their projected quartet of top players coming into the season of Dug McDaniel, Aaron Bradshaw, Sincere Parker and Zach Davis to play the best basketball they have played yet to come out of this tournament with a single victory. The four only had 25 points and racked up 11 turnovers in the loss to UNLV, along with Bradshaw only playing 10 minutes due to the quality of his play and Zach Davis fouling out.
Hardaway said that young guns, Julius Thedford and Simon Majok, will be “cornerstones,” but he needs the guys he expected to be there to step it up.
“We just got to guard our yard. We got to have pride and know my man is not going to score and beat me every possession down the court,” Julius Thedford said after his 16 point performance against UNLV. “You got to be a dog to be on the floor.”
If the Tigers cannot improve their play from the first three games of the season in this tournament, they will drop to 1-4 on the young season, which will be the worst start since 1997, the final year of the Larry Finch era.
The Tigers will start the tournament at 5 p.m. on Thursday against No. 1 Purdue.
