VOL. 132 | NO. 144 | Friday, July 21, 2017

Forget the ugly recent past. Forget the final 19-13 record and surely forget those last two games of the season – the 103-62 humiliation at SMU and the 84-54 beat down from UCF at the American Athletic Conference Tournament.

Face it, if you were a University of Memphis fan, that’s what you did, right? Started looking ahead to miraculously winning your NCAA Tournament office pool, where you weren’t at risk for riding with your heart and picking your beloved Tigers to go unrealistically deep?

Or maybe you focused on the Grizzlies. Or you started playing a lot of golf or, yes, daydreaming about next Memphis football season. Point is, you were ready to be done with the college basketball season even before Dedric Lawson and what felt like a cast of thousands exited the Memphis program.

But Jeremiah Martin didn’t have that reaction. He stayed. And he soul-searched.

He played point guard on that team. Averaged almost 35 minutes a game. He didn’t just leave his heart out there, but blood and sweat if not tears. His 4.4 assists and 1.8 steals led the Tigers and his 10.3 points per game make him the leading returning scorer with Dedric, K.J. Lawson and Markel Crawford all gone.

Martin got back to Memphis, and tired as he was, nursing a sore left wrist he had played with all season – and yes, he shoots left-handed – went to work on next season. He didn’t watch the entirety of those last two games, but he did punch up the highlights (maybe not the best word) on YouTube.

“It was a sick feeling because I’d never experienced a loss like that,” Martin said a few days ago, taking a break from his summer classes and workouts. “And it hurts because I know we’re better than that.

“I want to make an excuse like everybody was tired, but we just didn’t play good.”

That’s truth right there. And truth is a great way to begin healing from past wounds and moving ahead.

Martin, who went to Mitchell High School and decided to remain in Memphis, says he never asked all the players that left why they did so.

“It wasn’t none of my business.”

But he’s clear on the point that coach Tubby Smith never did wrong by him or any of those other players. Rather, they were looking for something else. Martin? He was grateful for the opportunity given; he played almost triple the minutes that he did as a freshman under Josh Pastner. And Smith, Martin said, made him a better player.

This summer began for Martin with a trip up to Xenia, Ohio, site of Athletes in Action headquarters, for a seminar on leadership. Next year’s roster will have just two scholarship players that got minutes last season: Martin, who will be a junior, and senior Jimario Rivers.

“We used to play Athletes in Action in exhibition games and it was great,” Smith said. “They came in and visited with your team, did devotions, leadership things. I wanted him to go be a part of it. We all need that type of guidance.”

Martin made new friends there, including Ohio State forward Jae’Sean Tate and Michigan forward Duncan Robinson. He stays in touch with them and a couple of other players.

“The thing I got out of it was with me having a lot of new guys, I need to build relationships,” said Martin. “If you got a strong relationship off the court, when you get on the court you’ll be even better. I think that’ll give us a couple more wins in the season.”

The Tiger basketball players live together, eat together, work out together, and hang out together. But with so many new faces – three freshmen and five junior college transfers – the relationships are starting at ground zero. Every group outing to Ching’s for wings or to walk around the mall helps them connect a little bit more.

“As far as stepping on someone’s toes, we’ve already had moments like that at practice,” Martin said. “Guys responded well. It wasn’t any hard feelings, just kinda, `OK, I got you, bro.’”

Martin did something else the other day, too. Went back through last year’s schedule game by game. It confirmed what he already knew. He wasn’t a consistent scorer last season.

For instance, his 25-point game in the win at Oklahoma was followed by scoring five or fewer points in four of his next five games. He finished the year with six straight double-digit scoring games, including a 23-point and 11-assist effort in a loss at Cincinnati.

“My defense was there and my effort was there every night,” he said. “My points were always up and down – good game, bad game, good game, bad game, bad game, good game, OK game … I feel like I could have done more.”

Of course, job one was to get the ball to Dedric Lawson.

“No doubt,” said Martin. “I definitely respected his role for the team. We all knew and I knew he was more of the first option.”

His role changes now. He must do more of everything. It’s going to be his team to run and Smith has made that plain.

And so Martin gets all the freedom, responsibility and, yes, expectations that come with that.

“The thing for me is to make sure he’s given the keys to the car, to be in charge,” Smith said. “This gives him the confidence that coach believes in me, trusts me.”

And as Jeremiah Martin must understand better than anyone, needs him.

Now more than ever.