Memphis basketball will begin its season in a little over a month, but as we get closer to the start of the basketball season, more preseason predictions are being released. On Friday, Evan Miya released his preseason rankings for all 365 Division I teams, and he had the Tigers ranked No. 94. With so much uncertainty around eligibility, Miya adjusted his rankings to include a “relative ranking” and a “rank excluding ineligible”. The second ranking excludes every player whose eligibility is uncertain. There are some who take falls in this ranking, but maybe nobody worse than LSU. Will Wade’s team ranks No. 17 in the country with everyone included, but if you exclude everyone with eligibility concerns, Miya ranks the Tigers No. 150. The only player on Memphis’ roster with eligibility concerns is Serbian forward Nemanja Popović, but the Tigers would move up two spots if you excluded everyone based on other teams moving back. Most reports about Popović’s eligibility are that everyone within the program is confident that he will be deemed eligible, and most predict the university will know before the season starts in November. Like previous seasons, Penny Hardaway replaced nearly his entire roster, and this offseason he made changes to his staff as well. Hardaway brought back Tony Madlock, who spent the last five seasons as a head coach, to be the associate head coach, and he added Trevor DeLoach, Sean Mock and Steve Wright as assistants. He also brought in 13 new players after Julius Thedford and William Whorton were the only two players to return from last year’s team. Hardaway added nine players from the transfer portal, three high school recruits and an international addition during the offseason. Miya ranks the roster at No. 88 in the country, and they rank No. 93 in offense and No. 104 in defense. Miya’s rankings put the Tigers as the second best team in the conference, behind Wichita State at No. 72. Earlier this week, Blue Ribbon released it’s college basketball preview magazine and picked the Tigers to be the best team in the American ahead of Wichita State and North Texas. Memphis starts the season on November 2 against Iowa State in a neutral site matchup at the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Hardaway’s team will have an opportunity to build an impressive tournament resume during the non-conference slate, as they will play seven high-major opponents and several other impressive mid-major programs. The American has released conference pairings, but they haven’t released full conference schedules yet.
