Penny Hardaway and Rick Barnes are fighting over flopping. Who’s winning?

The hate is back between the Memphis Tigers and Tennessee Volunteers on the basketball court. You can thank Penny Hardaway and Rick Barnes for that.

Memphis and Tennessee played a thriller on Saturday, with the Volunteers taking home a 102-92 win in a game that fell somewhere between a track meet and a slug fest. This was another impressive display from a Tennessee team that entered No. 3 in the polls, with veterans stars Admiral Schofield (29 points) and Grant Williams (19 points) again doing the heavy lifting.

Ever since, Hardaway and Barnes have been engaged in a war of words in the media. What happened? Who’s right? Let’s sort out college basketball’s best new feud.

Emotions boiled over in the final minute. With 47 seconds left and the Volunteers’ victory in hand, referees assessed a double-technical foul to Tennessee’s Jordan Bone and Memphis’ Alex Lomax. You can watch what happened here:

As the teams came together during the scuffle, Hardaway said Tennessee players stepped at his team “with their fists balled, talking trash to our guys.”

Hardaway also said that Bone said something “disrespectful” to Lomax. Bone admitted as much after the game.

Why was Bone so frustrated? Because he believed Memphis players were flopping throughout the game, which is why he was in early foul trouble.

“It was definitely frustrating,” Bone said. “We have a rule. When you have two fouls you have to sit down, especially in the first half. It was frustrating knowing I had to sit down on the bench. That was the scouting report. We knew they were going to come out and flop and that’s what they did. The calls went their way early in the game.”

Barnes backed up his player up on his radio show and took small shot at Hardaway’s original post-game comment in the process.

On his radio show Monday, Vol Calls on WNML, Barnes said: “It was a very difficult game to call when guys are trying to pick up fouls and every time there’s contact jumping back and this and that.”

He also made a joke about Hardaway’s postgame comment that the UT players had their “fists balled” and “ran over to fight.”

”At any time Saturday did you ball your fist up and get ready to fight the other commentator?” Barnes said on the show.

The Tennessee-Memphis feud could have died down in the moments immediately following the game. It didn’t. Instead, Hardaway took it to the next level by talking more trash on Tuesday.

There’s more. Penny’s presser included this soundbite, where he called Barnes “low class”:

“Honestly, if you just watch the film I’m not making anything up,” Hardaway said. “We even had it on the phone. I don’t know who Rick Barnes thinks I am, but I’m not a dude that’s going to mess around about anything. I just call it like I see it. No matter how he’s trying to make things seem, and I think it’s kind of low class how he’s trying to downgrade my guys for flopping and all that. Man, come on, give me a break.”

You can watch Hardaway’s full comments here:

Oh yes. The evidence against the Tigers is damning.

That first flop is legitimately comical. Even Brad Davison thinks that’s flopping.

Naturally.

Some exaggerated contact, sure. But not blatant flopping like the Memphis players were doing.

Here’s a key point missing in all of this: Hardaway admitted his players were trying to draw charges. From the first video from Mike Ceide above:

“As a coach, you’re going to try to teach charges. You’re going to try to teach to be smart. We were smaller. They of course played a physical game and we knew that. The calls didn’t go our way. As far as flopping, that’s not something that we teach. We don’t even understand that term.”

Hardaway can say he doesn’t understand the term “flopping”, but it falls flat that he’s trying to teach his guys to take charges. Taking charges are part of the game, sure, but when that’s your intended plan, it opens you up to allegations of flopping.

Instead of taking charges, why not, like, play defense?

As the video shows, the Memphis players did flop. Barnes didn’t appear to say anything truly out of line in his comments. We have a winner.

Won the game and looked better in the war of words.

The thing is, this is far from over. Memphis is going to have a team of freshmen studs next year. This rivalry is only getting more intense. We’ll give this round to Barnes and the Volunteers, but we can’t wait to see how the rest of this fight plays out.