The Memphis Tigers men’s basketball team represents the University of Memphis in NCAA Division I men’s college basketball. The Tigers have competed at the Athletic Conference since 2013. As of 2011, the Tigers had the 29th highest winning percentage in NCAA history. They play home games. ESPN Stats and Information Department ranked Memphis since the 19th most prosperous basketball program from 1962 to 2012 in their annual 50 in 50 list.
On April 7, 2009, Josh Pastner was appointed the head coach of the team. Pastner was hired as an assistant at Memphis in 2008 after serving as an assistant coach under Lute Olson at Arizona for six years. Pastner gained a reputation as a recruiter during his tenure at Arizona. In his first year as coach at Memphis, Pastner brought in Elliot Williams, a transfer from Duke, who headed the team in scoring and has been drafted to the NBA. Williams was allowed to play his first season after leaving Calipari took with him Memphis’ top-ranked recruitment class. In 2011 Pastner directed the Tigers back into the NCAA championship for the first time in his coaching profession, even though they lost in the first round into his former team, Arizona.
During the 2011–12 year, the Tigers announced they were leaving Conference USA to join the Big East Conference beginning in 2013 (later renamed the American Athletic Conference). They began the season strong, moving as high to No. 13 in the nation before falling out of the rankings (a phenomenon that would become a recurrent theme of this Pastner era). In the last game of the season, Josh Pastner’s victory over Tulsa gave him 72 career successes, the most by a Memphis head coach over his first few seasons. Memphis created its second straight NCAA Tournament after winning the Conference USA tournament. An 8-seed, the Tigers dropped in the initial round to 9-seeded Saint Louis. For the NBA, sophomore celebrity Will Barton left after the season.
Back in 2012–13, the Tigers, led by CUSA participant of the year Joe Jackson, won the Conference USA regular season and tournament titles in their final year in CUSA. [18] The Tigers started competition from the then newly formed American Athletic Conference in 2013. AAC contest was not as kind to the Pastner-led Tigers, since they made an NCAA tournament berth in just 1 of the group’s first 3 seasons at the AAC.
On April 8, 2016, facing mounting criticism in Memphis, Pastner took the task of head men’s basketball coach at Georgia Tech. [19] A few days after, the Tigers hired Tubby Smith to take over the head coaching job. [20] Smith had just won the Big 12 coach of the year award as well as some national coaching awards for his season at Texas Tech.
Smith was fired on March 14, 2018, after failing to achieve the NCAA Tournament in both of the two decades as head trainer. Penny Hardaway was confirmed as Smith’s replacement

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