Penny Hardaway will return for a ninth season as coach at Memphis, sources told CBS Sports on Monday.

An official announcement is expected soon.

Hardaway’s future had been in question following the worst season of his bumpy tenure. Memphis is the best-funded program in the American by a sizable margin and was thus sensibly picked to win its conference in October. What followed was a 13-19 campaign featuring an eighth-place finish in a league that ranks 10th nationally. The Tigers’ season ended last Wednesday with an 81-69 loss to Tulane. They finished 134th in the NET – one spot below Duquesne.

This kind of season combined with just one NCAA Tournament victory through eight years, combined with ticket sales and attendance at FedExForum plummeting, would likely lead to a change at Memphis if the coach were anybody other than Hardaway given how far things have fallen relative to the program’s historical standards. No reasonable person would argue otherwise. But the truth is that Hardaway is also a civic icon, a local legend, and the most beloved graduate Memphis has ever produced. Because of that, it would not be an across-the-board popular decision to move Hardaway only one year after he did win a conference championship and receive a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament, especially when he will enter next season still having made three of the past five NCAA Tournaments. So a source told CBS Sports that Memphis athletic director Dr. Ed Scott, with the support of the Memphis Board of Trustees, more or less decided that giving Hardaway a ninth year with clear standards that must be met is a more reasonable path than paying a buyout of more than $5 million that would’ve alienated the school’s most-famous alum and also fractured the fanbase.

So Hardaway will be back.

Sources told CBS Sports that Hardaway’s staff is expected to largely be remade and that the school will hire a general manager to handle everything general managers now handle in college basketball. Hardaway will again be allocated more money than any other American coach to roster-build in advance of next season. In return, he will be expected to win his conference and make the NCAA Tournament. If he doesn’t, a transition to the program’s 20th head coach would be likely next March, sources told CBS Sports.

“It’ll be a lot like the Bobby Hurley situation,” one source said.

The “Bobby Hurley situation” is a comment in reference to Arizona State bringing its longtime coach back for the 2025-26 season, following a disappointing 2024-25 season, with no promise for anything beyond. If ASU would’ve made the 2026 NCAA Tournament, Hurley would’ve likely received a new contract. But the Sun Devils didn’t. So he wasn’t. And now ASU is moving on with little drama and a fanbase mostly on board.

Bottom line, that’s the hope at Memphis – that what would’ve been a difficult, controversial and potentially costly decision this March will be less of all of those things next March, for one reason or another. Either way, Hardaway made it clear publicly in recent weeks that he wanted a ninth season to get his alma mater back on track. And now, after several days of uncertainty, Memphis has decided to give it to him.