Will coach Penny Hardaway take Memphis basketball back to March Madness this season?
The prospects are good, according to some of those paying attention.
On Tuesday, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi abandoned an updated offseason bracketology, and the Tigers are projected as the No. 7 seed in the East Region in Raleigh, North Carolina. Lunardi rates Rutgers as the 10 seed Memphis will face, while the winner of that game will face the winner of Duke-Lipscomb.
Of course, it should be noted that the start of the season is still more than three months away. The Tigers won’t give notice until Nov. 4 against Missouri at FedExForum.
But the predictions made today highlight a variety of things worth noting.
No. 1: Memphis’ second-half meltdown last season (a 7-8 stretch over the last 15 games that saw the program go from a near-deciding NCAA Tournament contender to not even being one of the first four teams left out of the field). did not scare the colchetologists.
Lunardi made several projections in recent months and had the Tigers in his area from the beginning. The same goes for CBS Sports colletologist Jerry Palm, whose latest update has Memphis as a 10 seed against Rutgers, interestingly enough, in Lexington, Kentucky.
#2: Memphis’ roster overhaul inspired some level of confidence. While it’s true that there are almost no transfers (the only returning scholarship player is forward Nicholas Jourdain), Hardaway and his staff have put together a roster that makes it easier for some to envision making the NCAA Tournament.
Bart Torvik, one of the top advanced metrics analysts in college basketball, believes in the Tigers, currently giving them an 86.4% chance of making the Big Dance. Torvik’s number crunching projects Memphis to rank 19th in adjusted offensive efficiency (115.0) and 36th in adjusted defensive efficiency (96.5) in 2024-25.
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A big factor in Torvik’s confidence level is transfer guard PJ Haggerty. The third-year sophomore averaged 21.2 points and 5.5 rebounds per game at Tulsa last season. Haggerty’s projected 4.6 adjusted points over replacement is tied for 10th-best among all Division I players — ahead of Marquette’s Kam Jones, Baylor’s Jeremy Roach and Kansas’ Hunter Dickinson.
The Tigers wrap up their eight-week summer training program this week. Nine of the team’s 10 players who signed were on campus all eight weeks, while the 10th (wing P.J. Carter) reported in early July.
Contact sports writer Jason Munz at jason.munz@commercialappeal.com or follow him @munzly on X, the social media app formerly known as Twitter.
This article originally appeared on the Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis basketball rises again in 2025 March Madness bracketology
