Memphis dismisses Hasan Abdul Hakim from team and reinstates Zach Davis
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Memphis has dismissed Hasan Abdul Hakim from its basketball program for what coach Penny Hardaway described as “repeated violations of team rules.”
“After repeated violations of team rules, we’ve made the decision to move forward without Hasan,” Hardaway said Wednesday in a statement. “Our focus remains on the young men in our locker room who are committed to doing things the right way and working toward a championship."
Hardaway also announced that Zach Davis has been reinstated to the program. Hardaway had said last week that both players were suspended indefinitely.
Memphis officials said they will continue to support Abdul Hakim academically as he pursues his degree. Memphis also will provide access to treatment and sports medicine resources as needed.
Abdul Hakim averaged 6.2 points, 4.1 rebounds, 1.8 assists and 22.3 minutes in 13 games, including 10 starts. He came to Memphis after spending two seasons at UT Rio Grand Valley, where he averaged 13.2 points in 19 games in 2023-24 and 13.3 points in 12 games in 2024-25.
Davis, a South Carolina transfer, has averaged 7.2 points, 4 rebounds and 20.5 minutes in 22 games. He has made eight starts.
Memphis (12-13, 7-5 American Athletic Conference) will try to end a two-game skid Thursday when it visits South Florida (18-8, 10-3).
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2026 Fantasy Baseball Tiered Starting Pitcher Rankings: Proactively building SP staff is key — get your guys
With the fresh fantasy baseball season approaching, it’s time to get you some tiered rankings from my Shuffle Up series. Use these for salary cap drafts, straight drafts, keeper decisions or merely a view of how the position ebbs and flows. We’ve already handled all the hitters; now, we move to the mound.
Starting pitchers in fantasy baseball are similar to running backs in fantasy football. The position will generally be riddled with injuries. We’ll want to have several speculation plays on our bench, guys who just need one thing to click. And getting this position right — or running lucky at this position — is probably the most important part of your fantasy season.
[Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Baseball league for the 2026 MLB season]
In past years, I would often be the last manager to address starting pitching, blanching at the uncertainty. Occasionally, I had success with this concept (one year I won the Yahoo Friends & Family League despite not drafting a starter; I did build a staff later) but I’ve since discarded the idea as a -EV strategy.
I want to proactively build my staff, like most of my competitors, at the draft. And I’ll have to live with the variance like anyone else.
The numbers are unscientific in nature and meant to reflect where talent clusters and drops off. Assume a 5x5 scoring system, as usual, and away we go.
More Tiered Rankings
Starting Pitcher
Relief Pitcher
The Big Tickets
$43 Tarik Skubal
$41 Paul Skenes
$39 Garrett Crochet
$36 Cristopher Sánchez
$35 Yoshinobu Yamamoto
$35 Hunter Brown
$34 Logan Webb
$32 Logan Gilbert
$31 Jacob deGrom
$30 Chris Sale
If you’re open to a high-priced ace but would prefer to start with a hitter, pray that Crochet slips to the second part of your draft. He’s in the prime of his career, tied to a team expected to contend for the playoffs and not reliant on a max-velocity fastball. Crochet will also be helped by his defense — the infield might be in flux, but the outfielders are all excellent, and the catching is also above average. Crochet was a little homer-prone at Fenway but still dominant there, and no one touched him on the road (2.25/1.00). The Red Sox were right to go all-in on Chris Sale once upon a time, and history repeated itself when it cleared out the prospect chest for Crochet last year.
Because the Dodgers already have nine toes in the playoffs, I’m going to be careful with workload projections for everyone on staff. Los Angeles will basically run a six-man rotation all year, and anytime a pitcher has the slightest hiccup with their arms and elbows, a rest is to be expected. Yamamoto is the only L.A. pitcher who’s qualified for the ERA title over the last three years (162 innings), and he’s also the only returning Dodger starter who logged more than 91 innings last year.
Webb is 60 innings ahead of the field over the past three years and working in San Francisco mitigates some of his mistakes. With a good-but-not-elite strikeout clip and a ground-ball bias, we have to accept that in some starts, Webb will get crushed by BABIP misfortune. And you have to be okay with his fastball checking in at an ordinary 92.6 mph. But Webb looks like a perfect fourth-round target to me.
DeGrom’s inning count has turned into an unsolvable SAT question. Starting in 2021 and cutting off the partials, this is what we’re looking at: 92, 64, 30, 10, 172. He’s moving into his age-38 season. Maybe it’s a fool’s errand to suppose any pitcher has a legitimate floor, but I know deGrom at this stage doesn’t have one. My heart will always be invested in deGrom, so I’ll avoid doubling down with fantasy investment. You have to decide for yourself.
Legitimate Building Blocks
$28 Bryan Woo
$27 Hunter Greene
$26 Max Fried
$25 Cole Ragans
$25 Joe Ryan
$25 Freddy Peralta
$23 Framber Valdez
$23 Jesús Luzardo
$22 George Kirby
$22 Dylan Cease
$20 Blake Snell
$19 Kyle Bradish
$18 Nick Pivetta
Rotator cuff problems cost Ragans more than half of his season, but the rest of his results were a cause of bad luck — every reasonable ERA estimator says he should have been in the mid-2s, not the 4.67 number on the back of his card. Ragans gave us a reminder of his upside with 13 return innings in September, striking out 22. There’s no reason why he can’t return to his 2024 level of production (3.14/1.14, fourth in Cy Young voting).
Cease was a frustrating case last year, as he piled up 215 strikeouts but gave us hurtful ratios (4.55/1.33). Toronto’s defense should help him turn more batted events into outs. Maybe he’s not going to challenge for the Cy Young again, but normalized sequencing should give him a mid-threes ERA, and he’s proven to be durable. Don't let his standard stats scare you off.
Talk Them Up, Talk Them Down
$17 Nolan McLean
$17 Tyler Glasnow
$15 Kevin Gausman
$14 Eury Pérez
$13 Sonny Gray
$13 Luis Castillo
$13 Trey Yesavage
$13 Robbie Ray
$13 Cam Schlittler
$13 Zack Wheeler
$13 Spencer Strider
$13 Nathan Eovaldi
$13 Michael King
$12 Brandon Woodruff
$12 Shane Bieber
$12 Sandy Alcantara
$12 Jacob Misiorowski
$12 Gavin Williams
$12 Chase Burns
$12 Trevor Rogers
$12 Shota Imanaga
$12 MacKenzie Gore
$12 Andrew Abbott
$11 Emmet Sheehan
$11 Nick Lodolo
$11 Bubba Chandler
$11 Ranger Suárez
$11 Shohei Ohtani
$11 Cade Horton
$10 Ryan Pepiot
$10 Tanner Bibee
$10 Carlos Rodón
$10 Jack Flaherty
The Brewers have become the new Rays, the low-market team that makes better decisions than just about everyone else and winds up in the tournament every fall. Thus, I want to be proactive with their high-upside arms like Misiorowski and Henderson, while fully understanding that the team will be careful with workloads and pitch counts. If Misiorowski even gets to 24 starts, he probably returns his spring draft cost.
The early market is not bullish on Abbott, which means he can actually be worse than last year and still return a profit. Regress-and-win players are my jam. The strikeouts will play, and fly-ball pitchers are misunderstood — at least they’re showing control of their outcomes.
The Marlins are ready to take the training wheels off with Pérez, and it’s hard to unsee that tidy 0.96 WHIP he had over his final 16 starts. With the Tommy John surgery firmly in the background, Perez is poised for a possible breakout. Hopefully, he doesn't feel like he needs to strike out the world — the Marlins have a problematic defense.
Some Plausible Upside
$9 Drew Rasmussen
$9 Shane McClanahan
$9 Matthew Boyd
$8 Merrill Kelly
$8 Zac Gallen
$7 Shane Baz
$7 Edward Cabrera
$6 Bailey Ober
$6 David Peterson
$6 Joe Musgrove
$6 *Gerrit Cole
$5 Aaron Nola
$5 Tatsuya Imai
$5 Bryce Miller
$5 Jameson Taillon
Peruse the Boyd splits and you might abandon the case — 12 of his wins were at home but he was a mess on the road, and his breakout stopped in the second half (4.63/1.19). And last season was his first full year starting out of six. But the Cubs have a top-five defense and a top-five lineup to support Boyd, and Yahoo rooms are giving you a reasonable 197.6 ticket. I can sign off.
Ober has always been a curious case, a 6-foot-9 righty with below-average velocity. A hip problem was probably responsible for his messy 2025; his three years prior gave us a 3.66 ERA and 1.03 WHIP. He’s well priced for profit, even if the Minnesota defense is no longer an asset.
Nola routinely comes up short of his expected stats to the point that you have to accept it as part of his profile. And even if that horrible 6.01 ERA was reduced to his 4.58 FIP, it’s not like either stat helps you. His fastball has lost velocity for four straight seasons and homers, always a problem, hit a new low last season. Nola might seem like a tantalizing name pick at a reduced ADP, but I’m not chasing him on the back nine of a slowly-fading career.
Bargain Bin
$4 José Soriano
$4 Roki Sasaki
$4 Noah Cameron
$4 Quinn Priester
$4 Logan Henderson
$4 Clay Holmes
$4 Seth Lugo
$3 Connelly Early
$3 Ryne Nelson
$3 Kris Bubic
$3 Mitch Keller
$3 Casey Mize
$3 Michael Wacha
$3 Sean Manaea
$3 Shane Smith
$3 Chris Bassitt
$3 Brayan Bello
$3 Ryan Weathers
$3 Zebby Matthews
$3 *Corbin Burnes
$2 Yusei Kikuchi
$2 Jack Leiter
$2 Zach Eflin
$2 Brady Singer
$2 Reynaldo López
$2 Parker Messick
$2 *Hurston Waldrep
$2 Ian Seymour
$2 Brandon Pfaadt
$2 Kodai Senga
$2 José Berríos
$2 Justin Verlander
$2 Max Meyer
$2 Lucas Giolito
$2 Braxton Garrett
$2 Dustin May
$2 Cody Ponce
$2 Matthew Liberatore
$2 Dean Kremer
$1 *Spencer Schwellenbach
$1 *Grayson Rodriguez
$1 Cade Cavalli
$1 Jeffrey Springs
$1 Joey Cantillo
$1 Troy Melton
$1 Will Warren
$1 Braxton Ashcraft
$1 Michael McGreevy
$1 Luis Severino
$1 Slade Cecconi
$1 Mike Burrows
$1 Chad Patrick
$1 Jonah Tong
$1 Zack Littell
$1 Eduardo Rodríguez
$1 Tyler Mahle
$1 Payton Tolle
Senga has a wide range of outcomes — you could imagine him being in a playoff rotation come October, but he’s also not guaranteed to make the Mets out of training camp. Maybe Senga’s second-half collapse was mostly about hamstring problems, but keep in mind he’s 33 and we’re three years removed from his last full season.
With someone like Matthews, we follow the strikeout rate and the prospect pedigree and hope he can improve the control. His ultimate success will come down to finding a solution against lefties, who slashed .316/.372/.572 against him last year.
Why Brian Daboll says he was drawn to Tennessee Titans OC job, Cam Ward as QB
New Tennessee Titans offensive coordinator Brian Daboll doesn't seem to have all that much interest in changing Cam Ward.
The Titans formally introduced Daboll as their offensive coordinator on Feb. 18, and questions about his second-year quarterback dominated the afternoon. As New York Giants coach in 2025, Daboll thoroughly studied and pursued Ward.
That included visits in Miami. Visits in New York. Visits at the combine. Dinners with Daboll, Ward and Ward's family. Interest was certainly high, and Daboll lists Ward as one of the primary reasons he chose the Titans' offensive coordinator vacancy over the roughly 20 others he could've pursued.
Ward, the Titans' No. 1 pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, was hardly perfect as a rookie. He ranked outside the top 30 in passer rating, yards per attempt, QBR and success rate while leading the league in sacks absorbed and ranking last among regular starters in touchdown rate. Former Titans coaches like Brian Callahan, Mike McCoy and Bo Hardegree spoke regularly about how Ward needed to get better at playing within the system, get better at taking what the defense gives him and rely less on his hero-ball inclinations when easy plays were available to him.
Daboll isn't talking the same way. If anything, he's emphasizing the out-of-structure moments as Ward's allure, not the sideshow.
"We’ve got a lot of work to do with everybody, but he’s a young, athletic quarterback who has accuracy," Daboll says. "He can make plays on the move. He can do a great job if the play doesn’t look great and then all of the sudden it looks great because of his ability. He’s smart."
When asked about Ward's unconventional footwork and throwing motion, Daboll said he's "comfortable" with Ward's mechanics. Daboll says he's watched all of Ward's tape dating back to his college years at Washington State and Miami, on top of the game tape from Ward's rookie year. While Daboll dodged any and all questions about specific schematic plans, saying it's too early for any strategies to be finalized, he says he's had a few run-ins with Ward while the quarterback has been in the building rehabbing his shoulder injury and that, "April can't come soon enough" so the installation process can begin in earnest.
Daboll's no stranger to quarterback development. From 2018-21 he was Josh Allen's offensive coordinator in Buffalo, helping groom Allen from a raw, unpolished prospect into a future MVP and perennial playoff contender. Daboll distanced the comparisons between Ward and Allen, saying every quarterback has to be treated differently.
But the offensive coordinator did share a few examples of why he's drawn to Ward.
"I think he’s got some moxie to him," Daboll said. "He’s tough. He holds himself to a high standard which is important for that position. Everybody’s going to look to that position to be the leader of the group. I wasn’t around him last year. I’ve only seen him a few times here or there when he’s going through those treatments.
"I’ve got a lot that I’ve got to dive into. But the meetings leading up to the draft process, the communication that we had, the kind of personalities that we have, that was a good fit."
Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at [email protected]. Follow Nick on X @nicksuss. Subscribe to the Talkin’ Titans newsletter for updates sent directly to your inbox.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Why Cam Ward? Brian Daboll details what draws him to Titans young QB
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