At the beginning of February, Memphis was all at sea. They were 11-8 and had accumulated an unimpressive -1.9 WAB. They had been a consensus top 25 team in the preseason and many sources had them in the top 10. Three months on, they were dead in the water and the only uncertainty was whether or not the school would wait until the end of the season to fire head coach Penny Hardaway.
Then salvation came from an unlikely place: Emoni Bates got injured. For the uninitiated, Bates was a five-star recruit that slotted somewhere inside the top ten in the class.