Tennessee men’s basketball coach Rick Barnes met with the media Monday afternoon inside the Ray and Lucy Hand studio.
On the Passing of Kobe Bryant:
“You know, I didn’t meet him personally, but the first time I ever saw him I was at Farleigh Dickenson University up in New Jersey during the summer watching a high school AAU event. There were four courts spread out up there and one of my assistants Frank Haith told me to watch a certain court. When there was a break on that court, I looked down at the other end and I see a guy putting on a show and I went down and watched that game. Frank came back and asked if I had watched that game I told him ‘No, I’m watching this kid. If you get me that kid we’ll win the National Championship.’ He said ‘Well the word is his father is going to get hired and he’s going to go with him.’
“He was without question the best high school player I’ve ever watched since I’ve been in coaching. Everything he did back then he just took to a different level. If you go back and look at the way he went about things it’s incredible. Everybody knows about his training and everything. But, getting to coach a guy like Kevin Durant and Kevin telling me he tried to spend time with him, because he wanted to know everything that he was doing. I think guys like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson did all of that for him and I think he’s handed it down to LeBron James. If you look at it, Kobe grew up loving Michael Jordan, then here’s LeBron loving Kobe and Kevin Durant right behind them loving LeBron.
“I think the way to look at it is that once he was done he still had another chapter he wanted to write. The way he got involved with women’s basketball for his daughters, along with everything else. Yesterday, I was at my brother in-law’s funeral when I heard the news, but our assistants were with our guys. When they told them a bunch of our guys started crying and today I got a call that our guys want to wear purple shoe laces tomorrow night, which shows the impact a guy like Kobe Bryant can have. I remember the impact a guy like Magic Johnson had on our teams back then. I remember telling them about his situation with HIV.
“Guys do grow up looking at and watching every move these players make. Kobe is certainly one of the greatest players ever, but it’s the way he did things. He did everything that a coach would want. You talk to your players about wanting to win, the competitive spirit and how hard you’ve got to work. Everyone knows about his six-hour workouts, the running and the work he put on his body and he continued to do that even after he retired. I remember sitting down specifically with Kevin Durant and watching film of Kobe Bryant. I would tell him he needed to add aspects of Kobe’s game to his game. For years coaches used him, because he was everything that everyone wanted to coach.”
On if he thinks the Kansas game was the best 40 minutes they’ve played all year:
“We did play well, but what we’re trying to get these guys to understand is that if you get four more stops on the defensive end, you can win the game. We show them plays where we helped them and we didn’t do our job. The same thing can be said on the offensive end. There’s four times where you come down the floor, there’s guys open for a basket you need and you might only get one of those. We missed twice on guys that were under the rim wide open as can be and we didn’t make the pass in transition. What you take from that game is, we could have won that game, but we didn’t because we’re not there yet in terms of taking advantage of opportunities when they present themselves. There’s so many close possessions that you can say this place or that play, but what I do appreciate is how our older guys handled the environment. They handled it well, which I thought they would and the younger guys didn’t. It’s just that we felt going into it that if we did what we’re capable of doing then we could win and we still feel that way. We came back and showed them, but you don’t get anything out of that. The ‘what ifs,’ don’t get you anything. Guys were competing, but the young guys were competing without a purpose. They weren’t focused on their assignments and even though they were playing hard and even though it’s something you have to do, you still have to do your job within that.”
On how eye-opening Saturday was for Uros:
“I hope it was a big one. We get on him all the time with reaching, because he can get by on some of our guys and deflect some balls, but we told him he couldn’t do that in this game. Then the first time he goes in, he reaches and he gets dunked on. The hardest he played was when we put him into foul. That was the only time he got in, got down and played with any intent in terms of he knew exactly what he was doing. Olivier did it one time too. Olivier showed that he can do what we ask him to do, but neither of them could sustain it. So, it should be a great learning experience for both of them, that if they would just stay locked in to what they’re supposed to do, then they’ll be just fine and if they don’t they’re going to get exposed.”
On Josiah Jordan-James’ performance on Saturday and what he can improve on:
“I don’t know, that was in my opinion arguably the worst game he has played all year. He wasn’t very good on either end of the floor. I don’t know what it was, we felt like he had really made strides, but he just wasn’t locked in at either end at all. He played poorly, and he knows it. A lot of this stuff is new to some of these guys, I get it but at this point in time we can’t be going backwards, I had thought we were past that stage with these guys, that they would understand that you have to keep moving forward. Because, this is the time of year where everybody gets separated. If you want to be a team that’s playing late in the year, then you better realize it’s about moving forward and getting better and not going backwards after you have learned some valuable lessons through losses. I like to win and learn lessons, it doesn’t feel very good when you know a guy is capable of doing more than he did and you lose.”
On Yves Pons’ performance and if he thinks he can continue playing at that high level:
“Him and Fulky were both terrific, they weren’t perfect, but they did a lot. I like to think Yves can continue this and move forward because there’s so much more that I think he can do too. One thing about him is that he is going to work and do what he has to do. He’s getting better, he’s getting better at playing around the rim, playing quicker and getting off the ground quicker. Like I was talking about with Josiah, he can’t go backwards either, he has to keep moving forward.”
On John Fulkerson’s play in the last couple games:
“We were all really happy with him Saturday and we are really trying to watch his minutes, we think that’s important. When we were making the substitutions the previous game, he didn’t want to come out. We knew going into the game Saturday that we were going to go head up against Azubuike and we were going to get him the ball and make him play and go at him. He did a fabulous job, he really did. He did everything we asked him to do. John is getting to a point now where he understands his mistakes, which with some guys it takes a long time. He had a play late in the game where we got him in an isolation and they came and took it away from him, but it wasn’t all his fault either because we were wanting him to get out of there. He reminded me of his freshman year when we went to North Carolina, then he got hurt after that, but now that’s who we hope he is and that he can continue to move forward.”
On Santiago Vescovi’s performance on Saturday:
“We were happy he was able to play without turning the ball over. He’s a guy that is starting to understand our system and that when he makes mistakes on the defensive end he knows it. In the past he didn’t, but he knew it on Saturday. We told him that they’re going to get somebody. Bill (Self) and his staff are good, they’re going to watch and see who’s watching the ball, whose ball watching away from the ball. They got him, and he knew it. On one of the other plays late in the game where we were in our switching defense he didn’t switch. But, he’s starting to understand where he’s breaking down on the defensive end which is a good thing. Then, offensively, we think he’s getting more comfortable, but he’ll have to continue to prove that because people are going to continue to challenge him.”
On how to prepare left-handed players in practice:
“It’s been well documented about Kansas; they have a lot of right-handed drivers. Regardless, you have to stick with your defensive principles. Now with the analytics out there, a player may go right 95% of the time. You start trying to shade guys that way. Most players are right handed. Everything we’ve always tried to do has been to go either way with it. We have never put an emphasis on telling our guys to go a certain way. When we are in something in particular for our guys, we are trying to get them to use their strong hand. We have some guys where they’d rather go this way then get back to their strong hand. It becomes an individual type of thing. Our emphasis Saturday was to force them left as much as we could and maybe their emphasis was for us to go right. It’s not something we put a lot of thought into.”
On trust level with Jalen Johnson:
“Like all these guys, he’s got to become a much better team defensive player. He should be the best on our team at doing that. People go at him when he’s on the defensive end. He’s got to understand what playing team defense is all about. He, Davonte Gaines, Josiah, Santi, all those guys. Jalen should not be in that position right now. He should already understand all this. We do have to trust him. Offensively, he’s settled into what we need him to do and he can take it to another level if he can figure out the defensive end the way we need him too.”
On what he’s seen from Texas A&M:
“They are very similar to where we are this year. The teams we’ve beaten in the league are pretty much the same teams they’ve beaten. They took LSU into overtime. I know they lost a tough game Saturday. They have gotten better since the non-league ended. They are moving in the right direction. They have a point guard who averaged 6 points in the non-league but now he’s up to 12 in the league. They have two post players that are like Yves (Pons) that can play all over the court. And another guy like Azubuike that can jump out of the gym. I think Buzz (Williams) is doing a good job with his program. They run a lot of sets. They use a press like we’ve been using. When you look at where they started and where they are now, they got to believe they are in the mix with everybody else.”
On consistent production from of the bench:
“It’s really important. Olivier and Uros had made some strides and we thought we could count on them, but there’s going to be some games where matchups create situations in terms of how much guys might play or might not play, but the fact is we need our bench to help us as the season continues to go. We need those guys to help us. We can’t have guards turning the ball over five or six times, you can’t do that, especially guys that you’re counting on simply to get your offense started. But, when you get to the bench, there’s not one guy on that bench that we don’t need and hope they’re going to play more. That’s what it’s going to get down to. How much do you want to play? We’re in a position in these close games where if you play up to your ability then the question is when it gets down really to the winning time, who can you count on? You’d like at that point in time to have some experience out there that’s rested as opposed to those who have grinded it all game just to get to that point. We do need those guys and we’ve told them all year how much we need them, we just need them to be consistent and do exactly what we’re asking them to do.”
On Jordan Bowden answering the bell:
“He was really good, he really was. I think the fact that he sat in the first half a lot probably gave him a chance to even see it more. We came in and in the second half he did a lot of good things. The lob he tried to throw to Fulky, those two guys were looking at each other and Fulky pointed for it, but in that situation, you can’t do that. That was the only thing disappointing with them in the second half, that was a huge play at the time and you’re not going to win a game against a top-3 team in the country in their building, thinking you’re going to throw up a play like that when it comes down to winning time. But, overall, I thought in the second half he was really good, and defensively he’s been good. One time, I think he was guarding Dotson and switched off and wanted to switch off and put Josiah on him and told the coaches that was his fault and he had been chasing him a little bit. Those are the plays that older guys have to eliminate, they just have to eliminate those plays. But again, in the second half I just thought he was really locked in.”
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