The task facing Temple when it takes on No. 18 Memphis Thursday night at the Liacouras Center (7 p.m., ESPN2) is a big one for second-year head coach Adam Fisher and his program.

The 13-3 Tigers are winners of four in a row and 35th in the latest NET rankings. According to ESPN’s men’s college basketball power index rankings, head coach Penny Hardaway’s team has played the nation’s toughest overall schedule and nonconference slate with a resume that includes wins over No. 2 UConn in Maui in late November, a victory at No. 16 Clemson on Dec. 14, and a home win over No. 16 Ole Miss at FedEx Forum on Dec. 28.

That latest Memphis win, a 74-70 nailbiter over East Carolina back on Saturday at home, was hardly a Picasso, though. The Pirates, who three days earlier beat Temple, hung around in the second half and were tied with the Tigers as late as the 1:11 mark before Memphis pulled away.

While it’s only mid-January with a lot of basketball left to be played, that win might illustrate how this year’s Tigers team is starting to look different from last year’s squad.

Last season, Memphis used a 10-game win streak that stretched into mid-January to grab a No. 10 national ranking. Then the Tigers blew a 20-point lead in a home loss to USF that set them on a four-game losing streak that dropped them out of the top-25 and on their way to a disappointing season that fell short of an NCAA Tournament berth.

Memphis led by as many as 18 over ECU Saturday before things got interesting at the end. Last year’s edition of Memphis basketball might have lost that game. This year’s team did not.

Hardaway, now in his sixth season at the helm of his alma mater, is traditionally tough on his players and won’t shy away from criticizing them in the media, and he wasn’t necessarily thrilled with what he saw Saturday.

“When we get into these types of games, these guys, instead of stepping on the pedal, they’re thinking, it’s just another game. It’s not,” Hardaway told reporters Saturday. “Because they’re gonna keep coming, and we have to do the same thing, so it was kind of disheartening to watch the effort in the first five minutes of the second half and the entire second half.”

Later on, though, Hardaway said, “We’re winning ugly, and I’d rather win ugly than lose ugly, for sure.”

Back in October, Memphis held its annual pro day for NBA scouts. On that day more than three months ago, the team was dropping hints that this year’s team was much closer and free of the perceived off-court drama and personality clashes that hurt last year’s roster.

Former Temple forward Nick Jourdain, a glue guy on this year’s team and the only returning player from last year’s roster, told reporters that day that “the vibes are better,” while Hardaway said he saw a team that was “really close knit,” something he wasn’t saying last season.

Jourdain, a 6-foot-7, 230-pound forward who has started all 16 games for Memphis and averaged 6.3 points and 5.4 rebounds per game to go with 20 blocked shots, is not the only familiar face Temple will see Thursday night in what the program hopes will be a well-attended “whiteout” game.

Guard P.J. Haggerty, the American Athletic Conference’s leading scorer, has averaged 22.4 points per game for the Tigers this season, almost two points ahead of the AAC’s third-leading scorer in Temple guard Jamal Mashburn Jr. The 6-foot-3 Haggerty is a Tulsa transfer who scored 21 points in a Golden Hurricane win over the Owls last March, and he shares the backcourt with the team’s third-leading scorer in Wichita State transfer Colby Rogers, who is averaging 12.3 points per game and shooting 38% from three-point range. Rogers scored a combined 16 points in two games against Temple last season, and the Owls held him to just 6 of 29 shooting in those games, both of which the Owls won.

In the frontcourt, Temple will be tested by fifth-year senior big man Moussa Cisse, a 6-11, 230-pound center who started his college career at Memphis. From there, he played his next two seasons at Oklahoma State and then last season at Ole Miss before returning to Memphis. He’s averaging 5.6 points, 5.9 rebounds and has blocked a team-high 24 shots, the fourth-highest total in the conference. Hardaway can also lean on Illinois transfer Dain Dainja, a 6-9, 255-pound forward who is averaging 11.4 points and a team-high 6.2 rebounds per contest.

Both Dainja and Cisse will present another learning opportunity for Temple forward Babatunda Durodola, who is averaging 4.8 points and 4.7 rebounds per game. The true freshman has started all 16 games after joining the program in late August after reclassifying from the 2025 to the 2024 class.

Durodola had one of his better games of the season in Temple’s 73-70 win at Rice Saturday, posting 11 points and four rebounds. His 19 minutes played marked the third-highest total of the season, but the Toronto native has been prone to early foul trouble and will have to be mindful of that Thursday and look to get rebounding help from his teammates like guard Shane Dezonie, who pulled in a career-high 15 boards at Rice.

Memphis will look to press Temple Thursday, but the Tigers have been susceptible to their own turnovers, as they committed 16 against ECU Saturday, with 10 coming in the second half. Despite its 13-3 record and national ranking, Memphis hasn’t done a great job taking care of the basketball, as the Tigers are ranked 12th out of 13 AAC teams in turnover margin at -0.75 and dead last in assist to turnover ratio at 0.88, so don’t be surprised to see Temple employ some pressure as well.

Memphis has, however, made its mark with its long-range shooting, sporting a conference-best 40% mark from three-point range. The Tigers rank ninth nationally in that statistical category. Guard Tyrese Hunter, who spent the last two seasons at Texas, leads the Tigers with 45 makes from deep, nine more than he made last season with the Longhorns and just 11 shy of his career-best mark from two seasons ago.

All of this perhaps seemed a tad bit unlikely back in September when Hardaway fired most of his assistant coaching staff just two months before the start of the season. He turned to veteran assistant Mike Davis and former Duke and Louisville assistant Nolan Smith, and it seems to be working so far for a Memphis team that sits atop the conference standings at 3-0 and is a perfect 4-0 on the road.

Temple, meanwhile, is 6-0 at home and looking at a prime opportunity to stay undefeated at the Liacouras Center and knock off a nationally-ranked opponent for the first time since the Owls won at No. 1 Houston back on Feb. 5, 2023.