Tennessee basketball: Memphis screwed up and wants Vols to fix it

We know enough now about why Saturday’s game between Tennessee basketball and the Memphis Tigers was canceled. This is 100 percent the fault of the U of M, Penny Hardaway and anybody else who didn’t make sure the team was properly vaccinated while Hardaway said the team was 90 percent vaccinated.

That hasn’t stopped the Memphis community from trying to put the ball back in UT’s court, though, and act as if it’s their fault if the game isn’t made up. Nevermind that they are the reason fans from both teams wasted money and time on a trip to Nashville this past weekend.

Somehow, if the game isn’t played, this year, it’s UT’s fault. Seriously, that’s what Memphis media is pushing. Penny Hardaway, who is responsible for this game not happening, was calling for as much after admitting that he “misled” the public about how vaccinated his team was.

Longtime Memphis columnist Geoff Calkins of The Daily Memphian, after writing this great article rightly criticizing Memphis, also tried to put the ball in UT’s court. He still found it worthy to both-sides this by calling out Tennessee basketball for not trying to make up the game.

Uh…what? As far as we know, Rick Barnes has only talked about not making up the game this year. He said that on Saturday and properly went into detail Monday about why that is. Barnes had two points that were pretty clear.

First, with a top 10 team coming in this week and then SEC play beginning, it really is too hard for the Vols to make up this game. Second, based on what happened Saturday, why would the Vols schedule another game against a team with so many unvaccinated players when it could result in cancelling the game again, costing the university and fans money again.

Now, maybe Calkins is implying that Barnes shouldn’t cancel the series permanently. However, there are no signs that he’s doing that, and given the fact that this is the second incident he and Hardaway have been in, could anybody blame him?

There’s still the issue with Hardaway calling Barnes “low-class” after their first meeting in 2018 based on something that didn’t happen. Hardaway himself admitted he was wrong for that a year later. Taking that into account with this, it’s easy to understand why Barnes wouldn’t want to continue the series.

More disturbing is the involvement of politicians. Before we knew all the details of just how much Memphis lied, U.S. Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09), who represents most of Memphis, tried to suggest initially that the Vols backed out. He said it was a joke but still deleted the tweet.

Cohen, one of the members of Congress publicly taking COVID seriously, should be wondering why the basketball team of the largest college in his district has so many unvaccinated players. Instead, he was taking shots like that and then taking photos with the team, inside and without a mask, after the news broke.

Sorry, but this makes no sense. If it’s not safe to be maskless inside because of the virus, it’s not safe to take a mask off for a photo. Following COVID protocols he supports and investigating the U of M after these lies should be his top priorities.

For the record, all of this was hard for me to say. I am from Memphis. Hardaway was my first favorite NBA player back in his Orlando Magic days. Reading Geoff Calkins for years is a huge reason I got into sports writing. I worked as a press intern for Cohen’s office in 2009. I like all of them, some on a personal level.

What makes it even harder is I’ve had public Twitter feuds with both Brian Rice and Clay Travis in the past, and I really don’t like Clay Travis. If you need anymore proof that I don’t have any bias here, read this article from 2019 when I called Barnes weak for first discussing the possibility of ending the Tennessee-Memphis series. Simply put, this is all hard for me personally.

However, my loyalty is to facts and truth. We can’t hold Tennessee basketball accountable for any of this. As we wrote on Saturday, Memphis needed this game more than the Vols given their record and their desperation for another quality win. Well, it’s their fault that game won’t be played. That’s the only story. Trying to put this on the Vols in any way is shameful.