The Memphis Tigers men’s basketball team signifies the University of Memphis at NCAA Division I men’s college basketball. The Tigers have competed because 2013 at the Athletic Conference. 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 as the 19th most prosperous basketball program from 1962 to 2012 in their annual 50 in 50 list.
On April 7, 2009, Josh Pastner was named 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 decades. Pastner acquired a reputation throughout his tenure at Arizona as a recruiter. In his first year as coach at Memphis, Pastner brought in Elliot Williams, a transfer from Duke, who led the team in scoring and was drafted to the NBA. Williams was permitted to play his first season after departing Calipari took him Memphis’ top-ranked recruitment class. In 2011 Pastner led the Tigers back into the NCAA tournament for the first time in his coaching profession, even though they dropped in the first round into his former group, Arizona.
During the 2011–12 season, the Tigers announced they were leaving Conference USA to join the Big East Conference starting in 2013 (later renamed the American Athletic Conference). They began the season powerful, moving as large to No. 13 in the nation before falling out of the rankings (a phenomenon which would eventually become a recurrent motif of this Pastner era). In the last game of this season, Josh Pastner’s success over Tulsa gave him 72 career successes, the most by a Memphis head coach over his first few seasons. Memphis made its second straight NCAA Championship 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 star Will Barton left after the summer.
Back in 2012–13, the Tigers, headed by CUSA participant of the year Joe Jackson, won the Conference USA regular season and tournament titles in their final season in CUSA. [18] The Tigers started competition from the then recently formed American Athletic Conference in 2013. AAC contest wasn’t as kind to the Pastner-led Tigers, as they made an NCAA tournament berth in only 1 of the group’s first 3 seasons in the AAC.
On April 8, 2016, facing mounting criticism in Memphis, Pastner chose the task of head men’s basketball coach at Georgia Tech. [19] A few days later, the Tigers hired Tubby Smith to take over the head coaching job. [20] Smith had only won the Big 12 coach of the year award in addition to some national coaching awards for his year at Texas Tech.
Smith was fired on March 14, 2018, after failing to achieve the NCAA Tournament in both of the two years as head trainer. Penny Hardaway was afterwards confirmed as Smith’s replacement