How difficult is Memphis basketball’s 2025-26 nonconference schedule?
Coach Penny Hardaway has been known to load up the non-American Conference portion of the Tigers’ schedules on a somewhat annual basis. (Benjamin Naylor/The Daily Memphian file)
For a good chunk of the early months of the offseason, many Memphis fans worried if the Tigers would assemble a nonconference basketball schedule comparable in difficulty to the one the program played a season ago.
Coach Penny Hardaway’s team went 10-3 in the 2024-25 season through an out-of-conference slate ranked the fourth-toughest in the country by KenPom. The work it did in that stretch — highlighted by wins over Michigan State, Missouri, Ole Miss, Clemson and UConn — was key in Memphis earning a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
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Parth Upadhyaya
Parth Upadhyaya covers the Memphis Tigers men’s basketball team. A Raleigh, N.C., native and a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Media and Journalism, Upadhyaya is a longtime college hoops junkie. Prior to joining The Daily Memphian in 2022, he covered high school sports in western Pennsylvania for the Beaver County Times and Penn State football for the Centre Daily Times.
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