MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Penny Hardaway has issued an apology for his expletive-filled rant directed at reporters.
"I want to issue an apology to my school, to the players, to our fans," Hardaway said in a post to his Instagram account Friday night. "I let my emotions get to the best of me last night. And that's not the way that you handle situations. I bleed blue and I'm fighting always for my school, for my city and for my players. We're working very hard. We know that there's adversity right now, but it's not going to stop us from working hard. We are going to make you guys proud, we are going to win and we're going to get through this together. And to the fans that are fighting with us, we really appreciate it, you guys help push us through with your energy and to my players, let's keep fighting on. We're 901 strong and Memphis, I love you, peace."
Following Thursday's loss to SMU, Hardaway took exception to a reporter asking if he has ever lost faith in his ability to be successful at Memphis.
“I think the one thing I can say to this media, because this media gets kind of f----- up sometimes when it comes to me," he said in the postgame news conference. "We don’t have our full roster, y’all know we don’t have our full roster. Stop asking me stupid f------ questions if I feel like I can do something. If I had my roster like they did, then I feel like I could do whatever I wanna do. Stop disrespecting me, bro, like don't do that. I worked too f------ hard, I worked way too hard for that. Y'all write all these b---s--- articles about me and all I do is work. We've got young kids on the floor. They got young kids on the floor."
The Tigers (9-8, 3-4) play at Tulsa Sunday at 2:00 p.m.