WATCH: Penny Hardaway sounds off on Memphis media, lets expletives fly

Suffice to say, things haven’t quite gone as planned for Penny Hardaway in the Memphis Tigers in the 2021-22 season.

Memphis (9-8, 3-4) once again fell victim to an upset on Thursday. This time, the Tigers fell 70-62 to the SMU Mustangs (14-4, 5-1). The outcome was an upset in the eyes of Las Vegas oddsmakers, who pinned Hardaway’s Memphis team as six-point favorites at home, but maybe not as much for America, which has come to expect the unexpected in Hardaway’s bumpy four-year tenure as his alma mater’s head coach.

Memphis let three SMU players score double figures — Marcus Weathers had 11, Emmanuel Bandoumel had 13 and Kendric Davis had 20 — and the Tigers shot an abysmal 1-of-12 from three-point range. It was a disappointing result for Memphis, which needed seven minutes to score its first basket of the game and trailed 16-2 roughly 10 minutes into the first half. And with frustration brewing, Hardaway appeared to take it out on the local media, proceeding on an explicit rant about his tenure.

“This media gets kind of fucked up sometimes when it comes to me. We don’t have our full roster. Y’all know we don’t have our full roster,” Hardaway said, when asked by Daily Memphian columnist Geoff Calkins if he had any doubts that he can succeed at Memphis. “Stop asking me stupid fucking questions about if I feel like I can do something. If I feel like I had my roster like they (SMU) did? I’d feel like I can do whatever I want to do.”

The tweets making the rounds with Penny's press conference outburst aren't in proper context.

See the full video here: pic.twitter.com/W8UajqF9F4

— The Field of 68 (@TheFieldOf68) January 21, 2022

Hardaway wasn’t finished, either.

“I’m coaching really hard, my boys are playing really hard, I’m not embarrassed about nothing,” Hardaway said after Memphis’ loss. “Y’all need to act like it. Act like we’ve got 17, 18 and 19-year-olds trying to learn how to play against 22, 23 and 24-year-old guys. Come on, man. Stop disrespecting me, bro. Don’t do that. I work too fucking hard. I work way too hard for that. Y’all write all these bullshit articles about me, and all I do is work. We’ve got young kids on the floor.”

Memphis entered the season with high hopes, thanks to Hardaway once again striking gold with his recruiting class, but the Tigers have fallen immensely short of expectations. After being ranked No. 12 in the AP preseason poll, and climbing up as high as the No. 9 spot, the Tigers would be lucky to make it to the NIT like they did last season.

Memphis’ recruiting class created offseason buzz for the third consecutive season, as Hardaway managed to secure commitments from five-star forward Emoni Bates, five-star center Jalen Duren, four-star forward Josh Minott and four-star forward John Camden, giving the Tigers the nation’s sixth-best recruiting class, via the On3 Consensus. Their record looks quite unlike the talented makeup of the roster.

Last season was no different: Memphis’ class came in at No. 4 in the country, thanks to a commitment from five-star center Moussa Cisse — who, after one tumultuous season, entered the NCAA Transfer Portal and went to Oklahoma State. And of course, the season prior was the same story, as the Tigers hauled in the No. 5 class in the country, per the On3 Consensus, after gaining commitments from five-star center James Wiseman and five-star small forward Precious Achiuwa.

But no matter how much success Hardaway has in the recruiting realm, he’s been unable to make any translation to on-court success.