The Amazing Mingo and the 1995 Tigers, who nearly shocked Arkansas

It still stings Mingo Johnson. Even 24 years later.

What appeared at one point to be a second straight underwhelming basketball season for the Memphis Tigers in 1994-95 had turned very special, very quickly. No. 6 seed Memphis — after first- and second-round NCAA Tournament wins over Louisville and Purdue — was now just seconds away from advancing to the Elite Eight. All it had to do was hold on against defending national champion Arkansas, and Memphis would advance to play fourth-seeded Virginia for a trip to the Final Four.

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Johnson, a 6-foot-2 junior college transfer, had introduced himself to the country that day with a career-high 32 points against the Razorbacks in the Midwest Regional semifinal at Kansas City’s Kemper Arena. Jim Nantz dubbed him “The Amazing Mingo” on the CBS broadcast as the junior guard dazzled the audience watching at home, helping Memphis rally from a double-digit first-half deficit and build a 79-67 lead over Arkansas with 7:23 to play.

Johnson, a high-level scorer out of Overton High School and Aquinas College in Nashville, had been a role player for coach Larry Finch for much of his first season at Memphis, averaging 10.6 points per game that season. But the lefty sharpshooter took over against Arkansas, going 10-of-18 from the floor (including 5-of-9 from 3-point range) and 7-of-10 at the line for a team that had four players who would play in the NBA (David Vaughn, Lorenzen Wright, Cedric Henderson and Chris Garner).

On a squad that featured mostly Memphis-area products, as many of the Tigers’ best teams have through the years, it was a supremely confident guard from Nashville, of all places, who carried Memphis on that March day in 1995.

“If we beat Arkansas, we had it,” Johnson says. “Virginia was kind of small. I think Cory Alexander was down at that time (with a broken ankle). I know they had Harold Deane, Curtis Staples and their main guy was Junior Burrough. But Junior Burrough was about 6-8. That year we had Ren (Wright, who was 6-11) and David (6-9). We would’ve gave them the blues. They would have got it for sure.”

But Arkansas, with Corliss Williamson outmuscling the freshman Wright inside, punched back, using a 15-4 scoring run to pull within a point late. Then, on a controversial call that still haunts Tigers fans and players on that team to this day, Garner was whistled for a hand-check foul on Arkansas point guard Corey Beck, who made one of two free throws to tie the game with 11.5 seconds left. Memphis missed from 3 to end regulation — Finch wanted a goaltending call on Arkansas’ Dwight Stewart on the play — and the Razorbacks controlled overtime, winning 96-91.

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“That (hand-check) call right now, from what I understand, is still being shown at the officials’ little meetings they have before the year, to show that was an awful call, especially at a bad time of the game,” Garner says. “So for me, I’ll never live that one down. Because I really think that was a team where we had a chance to make a real deep run in the tournament. We could’ve been better than the Sweet 16.”

Arkansas beat Virginia, then North Carolina in the Final Four to advance to a second consecutive national championship game, where it lost to UCLA. Memphis, meanwhile, fired Finch two years later and didn’t reach another Sweet 16 until 2006.

All these years later, Johnson, now a basketball skills trainer in Nashville, still thinks about what could have been.

“I think about it more during March Madness, when this time of year comes along,” he says. “I see it in a variety of ways, basically. Yeah, the hand-check, it was something that cost us on the strength of it really wasn’t a hand-check. It really wasn’t a foul. But at the same time, I think about me getting into the altercation with Beck where I end up getting the technical foul and it cost me an extra personal. I could’ve been out there to help my team.”

Some years you can see a Sweet 16 run coming. Memphis’ 1994-95 season was not one of those years — at least not early on.

The program was still feeling the effects of Penny Hardaway’s early departure for the NBA in 1993. One of the local products recruited to replace Hardaway, McDonald’s All-American Sylvester “Deuce” Ford, quit the team 11 games into the season.

Finch, coming off his only losing campaign in 11 seasons, had brought in Johnson for more scoring punch. Memphis had a strong front line with Vaughn, Henderson and Wright — all former McDonald’s All-Americans — but it needed help on the perimeter to go with Ford (who was still in the plans at that point) and Garner, an excellent distributor and defender at point guard but a non-threat as a shooter.

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Before he could prove to Finch he could contribute consistently, Johnson had to prove himself to teammates in preseason pick-up games. After all, he was an outsider, having watched a team consisting mostly of Memphis-area products, including Hardaway, advance to the Elite Eight in 1992.

“I had to earn my respect with those cats because it wasn’t a given. I wasn’t from there,” Johnson says. “But at the same time, it was more like they didn’t know who I was, coming from junior college. When I first came in, it was like Coach Finch already had his starting five — he knew who he wanted to start — and I wasn’t really with that. I didn’t have any problem with those guys, but I was coming from a situation where I was playing a lot myself. I had never rode the bench in my life.”

Says Henderson: “Mingo had this real different type of confidence. He felt like his game didn’t stink. He was gonna make shots and do what he do. He had a lot of confidence.”

Eventually, Johnson won teammates over with his fearlessness, shot-making and willingness to be a second playmaker.

“During the pick-up games, we knew he could play point guard,” Garner says. “But we also knew that he was a scorer and a shooter as well. I don’t think we were under the impression that he was as good a ball handler and creator as we found out he was. But we seemed to work pretty good together during the offseason. And during the season, I think it worked out better for our running game. It allowed Lorenzen and Ced and them to get out and do what they do best, man, just run and dunk.”

After a 4-3 start that included losses to New Mexico State, George Washington and No. 18 Georgetown, Memphis won 13 of its next 15 games. And although they went 9-3 in league play to win the Great Midwest Conference regular-season title just one year after going 13-16 overall, the Tigers never cracked the AP Top 25 that season.

A 77-64 loss to Cincinnati in the semifinals of the conference tournament made a deep NCAA Tournament run look even less likely. But Johnson and Memphis had other plans.

The 6-seed in the Midwest Region, Memphis rolled former conference rival Louisville, 77-56, in the first round in Austin, Texas. Two days later, the Tigers upset No. 3 seed Purdue, 75-73, on Vaughn’s shot at the buzzer. Johnson led five Tigers in double figures with 18 points. Up next were the Razorbacks, who had edged Memphis, 88-87, in Fayetteville earlier in the season.

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This time, the Tigers believed, the outcome would be different. They were nearly right.

“For 39 minutes and whatever change, we were the best team on the floor,” Henderson says. “I think the next team we played, Virginia, we were gonna run them out of the gym like Arkansas. We had depth. We had experience. I tell people all the time we had a lot on that team that year.”

Johnson’s senior year in 1995-96 started with much promise as Memphis climbed to as high as No. 3 in the AP poll in December with Henderson, Wright, Garner and high-jumping forward Michael Wilson all back. After a 64-61 loss to No. 1 UMass and Marcus Camby in early January, Memphis clobbered Arkansas by 22 later in the month, getting a measure of revenge for its season-ending loss to the Razorbacks the year before.

The Tigers earned a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament, with Johnson averaging 13.6 points. But Memphis was upset in the first round by a Malik Rose-led Drexel squad, 75-63.

The next year, following the early departure of Wright for the NBA and without Johnson, the Tigers went 16-15. Finch was fired and replaced by Tic Price.

Johnson, meanwhile, fell off the basketball map after his two years at Memphis. In 1997, after returning to Nashville, his older brother was killed. “After that I was in a dark place for a while,” says Johnson, whose career .381 shooting percentage from 3 at Memphis still ranks fifth-best in program history.

But the basketball in the Johnson family hasn’t stopped bouncing. His son, Jordan, who is nicknamed Popi, played high school basketball in Memphis and won a state championship as a point guard at Hamilton High last season. Jordan is now at Athens (Tenn.) Prep.

“He has way more raw talent than I had, but he likes to cruise at times,” Mingo says of Jordan. “Can’t cruise. You’ve got to outwork ’em. He’s coming though. He’s a diamond in the rough. We ain’t through. He’s still workin’. We just workin’ in the dark.”

(Photo: Joe Ledford/AP)

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