Gut reactions from Memphis basketball's 71-65 loss to Wichita State in its opening game of the American Athletic Conference tournament.

A new low in the Penny Hardaway era

Four wins in four days at the AAC tournament always seemed unlikely for this unpredictable and inconsistent Memphis basketball team.

But one-and-done? That seemed just as far-fetched.

It turns out, however, this season already was so far off the rails that anything was possible, including a regrettable first. The Tigers have always played in the quarterfinals of the AAC tournament. Until now. Until they lost to a team ranked No. 155 in the NET rankings entering this game.

This will likely be the final humiliating blow in a season that started with so much promise, that had Memphis ranked in the top 10 as recently as January. That it then collapsed into a certifiable mess must lead to some serious soul-searching by coach Penny Hardaway.

Why did this fall apart so dramatically? Why couldn’t he stop the freefall? Why did it take these players until they were down by 14 to play with any kind of urgency in a win-or-go-home situation Thursday in Fort Worth? It isn't just the loss of Caleb Mills to injury, or the potential academic misconduct investigation that sidelined Malcolm Dandridge.

To brush this off as fluky would be a mistake.

This is suddenly the low point of the Hardaway era, just two months after he seemed on the cusp of fielding the best Memphis team since the John Calipari era. No matter what he wants to say about the state of his program, there’s no ignoring the series of setbacks that befell this team.

It’s going to lead Hardaway back to the transfer portal this offseason, but he can’t put together a roster that seemed to care so intermittently as this one seemed to care. He can’t ignore that almost every team he’s coached at Memphis has gone through the sort of drastic ebbs and flows that ultimately derailed this group.

He can’t keep telling himself he’s doing a “great” job when the results are not great, and the uncertainty of how he goes about fixing this isn’t great, either.

“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” Hardaway wrote on an Instagram story earlier this week defending himself.

Well, Thursday just felt damning.

The defense rests ... again

Memphis wasn’t going to win four games in four days playing defense the way it did to start Thursday’s game, and it proved too much to overcome.

The problem, of course, is that waning defensive effort and execution have been at the core of the Tigers’ issues as their season deteriorated over the past two months. This has been the worst defensive team Hardaway has ever fielded, and it nearly cost them again Thursday.

Wichita State shot better than 50% from the field during the first 32 minutes of the game, building a lead that ballooned as high as 14 points in the second half. Though David Jones, Nae'Qwan Tomlin and Jordan Brown sparked the 17-2 run that allowed Memphis to actually take the lead back with three minutes to go, the underlying cause of the surge was actually defense.

Memphis forced Wichita State into nine straight misses and started forcing turnovers with its full-court press.  The Shockers, though, scored on their final five possessions to secure the upset. When it counted, the Tigers got blown by or gave up open looks.

Hardaway has relied on his trapping, pressure defense to great success in some seasons. But this team couldn’t play that way, and he never seemed capable of adjusting to that.

Jahvon Quinerly's disappearing act

The storyline never really failed this season.

When point guard Jahvon Quinerly plays well, the Tigers win. When he doesn’t, the Tigers lose.

When they went 15-2 to start this season, he mostly played well. When they closed this season with a 7-8 record over their final 15 games, he too often was invisible or a liability.

Quinerly made his first shot Thursday, but wound up 3 of 15 from the field for eight points and three assists.

Memphis needed its best players to show up to pull off four wins in four days, and Quinerly’s no-show led to this team falling short of every Memphis team of the past decade.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis basketball's AAC tournament loss is low for Penny Hardaway era