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Why is Penny Hardaway still talking about the loss the University of Tennessee?
On Saturday, Tennessee beat Memphis 102-92. With 47 seconds left in the game, UT’s Jordan Bone, Memphis’ Alex Lomax and Jeremiah Martin were all issued technical fouls for a “scuffle”. I watched the game while on a flight to Chicago and I’m still trying to understand what defines a “scuffle”. I’ve seen much worse in Disney movies.
When Memphis coach, Penny Hardaway said that Tennessee players came over during the “scuffle” with “their fists balled, talking trash to our guys” comment, I laughed out loud. Literally. So then I watched the “scuffle” over and over on twitter to try to find the “scuffle” and see one fist balled. I saw nothing but what could be a verbal exchange between Bone and Lomax. Trash talking is part of sports. I would love to hear what athletes say to each other when they are playing.
(In college, I had a business class where we had to start our own (on paper) business. I started GameTime; where you never miss a word. Basically, I wanted to have athletes mic-ed up and just like you can tune into a NASCAR driver during a race, you could tune in to athletes while playing. Genius on paper, but in reality, all the trash talking would ruin any endorsement deals and cause more headline news than President Trump.)
Hardaway took over the Memphis program last spring and he is trying to recruit in the same state as Rick Barnes. The instate rivalry just got a little more fun. But if Hardaway doesn’t toughen up, he will have a short coaching career. Whining isn’t going to get you very far.
“Alex (Lomax) is a kid that’s not gonna talk trash, so obviously Jordan Bone said something to him disrespectfully. He protected himself by, you know, saying something back. Then Jeremiah (Martin) jumped in and said something to Jordan Bone, and the referee tech’d Jeremiah. I said (to the referee) that the entire Tennessee team ran over to fight. You know, their entire team emptied the bench to run over. They weren’t coming over because it was a timeout. You could visibly see guys with their fists balled, talking trash to our guys or whatever.” -Classic Penny Hardaway whining.
The only issue I have with trash talking is that I can’t hear it. So can someone please explain to me why Penny Hardaway is still talking about a technical foul? On Tuesday, Rick Barnes told the Knoxville New Sentinel that he knew Memphis was going to come out and flop. (And they did. At one point during the game I said to myself, I didn’t know we were playing Duke.) This comment lead Hardaway to take shots (more like air balls) at Tennessee Coach Rick Barnes by saying “Rick Barnes, get the bleeeep out of here”. WHAT? Hardaway stillll thinks his team was about to get in a real, full on brawl with UT. Penny Hardaway, get the BLEEEEP out of here. PS. The best part of the technical fouls was watching Bone shoot his free throws alone and giving his team mates air-high fives. https://twitter.com/Vol_Hoops/status/1075160026040463360