The news is final: James Wiseman is leaving Memphis.
Wiseman’s departure has implications for the future of the NCAA, and for the basketball industry as a whole, but more importantly, it puts Memphis back into the NIT conversation.
This past weekend, Memphis pushed themselves away from the NIT picture with a resounding victory over Tennessee. All year, the media had been higher on the Tigers than the data, but with this performance, the data began to catch up.
Since then, a moderate portion of hell has broken loose.
On the very same day, Cincinnati fell to Colgate. Cincinnati then went and beat Tennessee themselves. Now, the James Wiseman news.
Memphis does look like a good basketball team, even in the absence of Wiseman. With so many opportunities for painful losses in the AAC, though, and with no “their best player was gone” rationale upon which a certain committee can rely to justify conscripting Penny Hardaway’s team, the NIT hopes for a certain city on the Mississippi just got a lot stronger.
Jay Bilas declined to comment on this story:
