Memphis basketball's Penny Hardaway apologizes to fans after FAU loss

Penny Hardaway opened his weekly radio show Jan. 12 — the day after his Memphis basketball team got bullied by FAU in an 89-78 road loss — by apologizing to the fans.

“It was really a bad game all around from a hustle standpoint. Definitely didn’t represent how we wanted to represent,” he told Jeff Brightwell, host of the "Penny Hardaway Radio Show." “We owe an entire apology to our Tiger fans. I appreciate you guys showing up tonight, but that was just totally unacceptable yesterday.

“We got out-hustled. We got out-scrapped. We didn’t fight (in the) second half. It was just very, very disappointing.”

The Tigers (7-8, 2-1 American Conference) had their three-game winning streak snapped by the Owls, who led by as many as 17 points. Aaron Bradshaw put up a career-high 21 points, but FAU dominated the rebounding battle (46-29), scoring 19 second-chance points and 20 fast-break points.

Memphis caught a spark late in the first half, ripping off a 7-0 run to cut FAU’s lead to 36-34. But the Owls responded with a 7-0 run to open the second half, and the Tigers never recovered.

Hardaway considered opening the second half with some combination of the same lineup (Dug McDaniel, Julius Thedford, Curtis Givens III, Zach Davis, Ashton Hardaway and Bradshaw) that gave his team some momentum going into the locker room. Instead, he elected to put the game’s original starting lineup (McDaniel, Davis, Hardaway, Bradshaw and Hasan Abdul Hakim) on the floor.

“We didn’t want to take confidence away from Zach and Hasan at that moment,” Hardaway said. “(We) went with the same starting group and said, ‘Hey, we’ll sub early if they don’t have it going.’ ”

Sixty seconds into the second half, FAU was back up by nine points. Hardaway’s first substitution of the half came with 14:38 remaining and the Tigers trailing by 11.

“Just didn’t compete yesterday at all,” Hardaway said. “But there’s no panic mode.”

Memphis welcomes Temple (11-5, 3-0) to FedExForum on Jan. 14 (7 p.m. CT, ESPN+). Temple is currently tied for first place in the league standings with Tulane.

Reach sports writer Jason Munz at [email protected], follow him @munzly on X.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis basketball's Penny Hardaway apologizes to fans after FAU loss