Hardaway mentions potential Arkansas-Memphis matchup
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There is once again chatter about Arkansas and Memphis potentially meeting on the hardwood.
Speaking to the media for the first time since his team was eliminated from the 2022 NCAA Tournament, Memphis head coach Penny Hardaway revealed the Tigers were working toward scheduling home-and-home series with Louisville and Arkansas.
However, it doesn’t sound like a renewal of the Razorbacks’ rivalry with Memphis — which has been dormant since 2003 — is imminent. According to The Commercial Appeal, Hardaway indicated the Arkansas matchup wasn’t “as far along” as the one with Louisville and an Arkansas source echoed a similar sentiment to HawgBeat.
This isn’t the first time Hardaway has mentioned the possibility of resuming the rivalry, which was ended by then-Tigers head coach John Calipari when he claimed Arkansas was no longer a “national program.”
Shortly after being hired to coach his alma mater in 2018, Hardaway did an interview with the old Sports Talk with Bo Mattingly radio show and said it was one of several games he hoped to make happen.
“I want to play all the teams that we used to play back in the day to get the rivalries going again,” Hardaway said. “I would love to play Arkansas. … I’m definitely going to be the guy that wants to get those rivalries going again the way they were back in the day.”
Prior to Calipari’s decision to stop playing the Razorbacks, the two teams played annually in a 12-year home-and-home series beginning in the 1991-92 season, during which they also met twice in the NCAA Tournament. Including seven games before that stretch, Arkansas has a slight 11-10 lead in the all-time series.
It has been nearly two decades since they met on the hardwood, though. Even after Calipari bolted for Kentucky, Memphis still chose not to play Arkansas because he was replaced by Josh Pastner, one of his assistants.
Relations between the schools began to soften when Tubby Smith was hired 2016, as he and former Arkansas coach Mike Anderson were close, and they were even targeting the 2018-19 season for a resumption of the series. However, Smith was fired in 2018 and Anderson was fired the following year.