Jordan Brown shows Penny Hardaway is still king of the college hoops offseason | Giannotto
Nobody in college basketball pulls off fashionably late quite like Penny Hardaway.
This much everyone should be able to agree on after the Memphis basketball coach reeled in another high-profile transfer at a point on the offseason calendar when few other coaches have scored those sorts of recruiting wins.
And he’s done it four years in a row.
In 2020, five-star recruit Moussa Cisse committed in July. In 2021, future NBA lottery pick Jalen Duren announced his commitment to the Tigers in July and fellow top-10 prospect Emoni Bates followed suit in August. Keonte Kennedy didn’t join the Memphis roster until the end of June last year, and Damaria Franklin didn’t sign until the end of August.
Now, here comes Jordan Brown – the perfect kind of shade for whatever glare created by the three-game suspension the NCAA handed to Hardaway last week for recruiting violations.
Brown is a significant get, filling a void at center and potentially giving Memphis the best frontcourt in the country if DeAndre Williams is granted another year of eligibility. Brown's addition propels Memphis into the top 25 conversation again. With veteran perimeter threats like Florida State transfer Caleb Mills and St. John’s transfer David Jones, and possibly the addition of Alabama point guard Jahvon Quinerly, the Tigers are going to be older and deeper and maybe more talented than they’ve ever been under Hardaway.
So much for those early spring concerns about the roster.
It means, for this season, Hardaway has better positioned the program to make the deep NCAA tournament run that’s missing from his resume. The Tigers certainly seem equipped to take out Florida Atlantic and its returning nucleus from the Final Four in the AAC this season.
More significantly, though, these developments confirm that moving forward there is no coach in the country better equipped to handle the modern realities of the college basketball offseason. It's especially important at a place like Memphis, which has long relied on a formula predicated on punching above its weight class in order to be mentioned among the elite.
Hardaway has proven, on the recruiting trail especially, to be both fearsome and adaptable without the same NIL war chest as those he's often competing against.
Just consider the six offseasons in which he has been recruiting on behalf of Memphis.
2018: Memphis secured a top-30 recruiting class in a matter of weeks after Hardaway was hired, including commitments from Alex Lomax and Tyler Harris after it had been assumed they weren’t likely to attend the same school.
2019: Memphis got its first No. 1 recruiting class in school history featuring two future lottery picks (James Wiseman and Precious Achiuwa).
2020: Memphis adds Cisse through conventional recruiting means and beats Kentucky to get Williams through the transfer portal – the first hint at how he’s building the roster today.
2021: The late additions of Duren and Bates give Memphis its second No. 1 recruiting class in three years, and the class also includes a third future NBA draft pick in Josh Minott, despite the hovering cloud of an NCAA investigation.
2022: The top transfer in the country – Kendric Davis – joins the Tigers almost entirely because of his relationship with Hardaway.
2023: Hardaway adds notable recruiting ace Rick Stansbury to his staff and replenishes his roster with seven transfers, most notably a commitment from the best mid-major player in the country
That last part, by the way, isn’t an exaggeration. Brown, a 6-foot-11 former McDonald's all-American, is coming off a season at Louisiana in which he averaged 19.3 points and 8.6 rebounds and earned the Lou Henson National Player of the Year award. He’s the most accomplished player Memphis added this offseason.
The only issue, of course, is the dramatic roster turnover – much of it inevitable after Hardaway had a team featuring nine seniors last year. It’s likely 12 of the 13 scholarship players will be different than last season when the Tigers begin the season.
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There’s a debate to be had over how feasible it will be for Memphis to be the type of elite program Hardaway aspires to be with such limited continuity – even if the current landscape encourages player movement and demands volatile rosters. There are also a lot of mouths to feed now that Memphis has five players who took at least 10 shots per game on their previous team last season.
But that can wait until we see how this all fits together on the court. This moment calls for celebration and appreciation because there's one important distinction that hasn't changed, even as seemingly everything else changed about college sports recently.
So long as Hardaway’s late recruiting magic gives the fans hope, no amount of turmoil will linger for long.
You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter: @mgiannotto