Penny Hardaway will return next season as the basketball coach at Memphis, sources told ESPN.
After multiple meetings with Memphis administration, Hardaway presented a plan for next season, which will be his ninth at the school. According to sources, his return for 2026-27 will include changes on the coaching staff and hiring a general manager.
Hardaway expressed his desire to turn the program around after a 13-19 season, which included a late slump where the Tigers lost seven consecutive games before winning the regular season finale at Tulane.
Memphis then lost to Tulane in the first round of the American Conference Tournament. It was the program’s first losing season since 1999-2000 under Johnny Jones, the year before John Calipari arrived at the school.
This marked Hardaway’s first losing season in his eight years at Memphis, which includes a 175-87 record.
He has one NCAA tournament win in those three appearances. Memphis earned a No. 5 seed in the NCAAs last year before falling to No. 12 Colorado State in the first round.
The future of Hardaway amid the slump this season loomed as a vexing decision for Memphis, as Hardaway ranks highly among the school’s most famous graduates and an icon in the city. He’d also reached the NCAA tournament three of the previous four years.
Hardaway has two years remaining on his contract, which runs through April of 2028. His buyout if let go this year was nearly $6 million.
After losing in the American Conference tournament, Hardaway called it “a failed season.”
“It was a failure for sure,” Hardaway said. “You can’t categorize it anywhere else, any other way. We didn’t do what we needed to do. We failed.
“But, again, you can come back from failure. There’s been a lot of teams that have gone through this more than any and I’m the head of that failure. Couldn’t get the guys to really believe in the buy-in every single game. We worked hard, we put guys in position, and then the guys have to go out there and take over from there because we can’t go on the court.”
