...and if his offense isn't good this year then I'll concede the point but until this year Penny had had one NBA caliber talent and has been coaching some of the youngest teams in the country. Prior to this year he had brought in the 30th ranked recruiting class, the 1st (though, once again, he got 3 games out of the #1 player in the country) and the 24th ranked class. If your point were true about talent being the differentiator with defense as opposed to coaching on offense shouldn't the schools that have recruited at the top of the sport in that span be the elite defensive teams? Since Penny arrived at Memphis he is one of 24 coaches to have a top 60 defense every year. Here are the coaches ranked by their average defensive efficiency rank in that time:

1. Chris Beard
2. Bill Self
3. Juwan Howard
4. Greg Gard
5. Kelvin Sampson
6. Tony Bennett
7. Tom Izzo
8. Leonard Hamilton
9. Penny Hardaway
10. Mark Few
11. Mike Rhoades
12. Brad Brownell
13. Steve Pikiell
14. Matt Painter
15. Shaka Smart
16. Mark Turgeon
17. Tad Boyle
18. John Calipari
19. Chris Mack
20. Archie Miller
21. Pat Chambers
22. Craig Smith
23. Eric Musselman
24. Richard Pitino

I'm pretty sure if bringing in elite talent automatically made your defenses great then Coach K, Roy Williams, Jay Wright, Will Wade, Rick Barnes, Bruce Pearl, Dana Altman, Mike White etc would be on that list.