MEMPHIS, Tenn. >> Memphis coach Penny Hardaway thrilled fans as an NBA player and showed his chops as a college recruiter in the early days of the transfer portal and name, image and likeness compensation for players.

His credentials as a basketball coach? Not among Hardaway’s best qualities to be mentioned first for the rare coach still with his own shoe line.

This March Madness, that may finally be changing in his seventh year at his alma mater. Credit last season’s disaster of a season.

“That fall that I took actually made me better,” Hardaway said. “It made the team better because I got better.”

As a result, Hardaway is the American Athletic Conference coach of the year. It’s the latest and maybe biggest answer to critics questioning whether he could actually coach games as well as he draws in talent. His Tigers mobbed him at practice when told of Hardaway’s win and joined the celebration with a big grin. The team followed it up by adding the AAC Tournament title on Sunday.

The Tigers go into the NCAA Tournament as the No. 5 seed in the West Region, playing 12 seed Colorado State on Friday in Seattle. It’s the program’s highest NCAA Tournament seeding since 2009, right before John Calipari bolted for Kentucky and a year after the Tigers lost in the national championship game.

Hardaway hoisted the AAC regular-season hardware with Memphis — a team almost totally rebuilt from a disappointing season — and cut down the nets on their home floor to celebrate.

“It means a lot because I’ve grown a lot,” Hardaway said winning that league title. “I didn’t feel like I had it all together at one point.”

When hired in March 2018, Hardaway was seen as the favorite son and savior of a program that had languished under predecessor Tubby Smith. Hardaway has won the NIT, been to the NCAA Tournament twice and finally has a conference championship. The accomplishments so far are more significant given what happened a year ago.

Preseason promise and hopes of dominating the American Athletic Conference came crashing down. The Tigers finished tied for fifth, dealt with internal problems and were eliminated in a first-round loss to Wichita State in the conference tournament.

That left Memphis not playing somewhere in the postseason for the first time in four years.

“The bottom fell out,” Hardaway said, “and there was nothing I could do about it.”

So, Hardaway changed everything. Coaching staff, the roster, his own approach to coaching. He acknowledged that he was “relying on too many people.”

“I had to learn a lot, and that growth this year was what I needed,” Hardaway said. “It’s just a great feeling.”