KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes met with the media Monday, Oct. 19, a day before the Vols travel to Duke for their second exhibition. Barnes addressed the second-half collapse against Xavier, updates on Tyler Lundblade and Jalen Washington, Miles Rubin’s foul trouble and his history in Cameron Indoor Stadium.
What’s the mood been like since the first exhibition, and how have the guys bought in?
“I think everything is good. We know that we’ve got a lot to learn just by playing against somebody else. There were some things in the first half that were good. We should’ve scored more points than we did in the first half. The second half, it really got down to when we hit some adversity, we just stopped altogether playing defense and rebounding, just think we’re gonna shoot the ball and think that’s gonna be good enough. We knew that would rear its head at some point in time. We knew that, and that’s why I love these exhibition games, because you get a chance to let those things happen. Obviously, we’ve got a good group of guys. They wanna learn, but they don’t know what they don’t know right now.
“There’s some elementary things that we feel like they should, but that’s not their fault, ’cause they’re learning a whole new system. And some of that we’ve got to do better jobs as coaches to teach them. But their attitudes have been good. I know they wanna be a good basketball team, but we haven’t been able to put the whole team together yet with Tyler [Lundblade]. I don’t think he’ll play again tomorrow, but he’s making progress. And Jalen’s [Washington] status, we don’t know. We’re still trying to figure out a lot of things with this group, but we will figure it out.”
What are the next steps for Jalen Washington after the temporary injunction went against him last week?
“We don’t know when. We think he will be eligible to play. We think it will happen, but until then, he’s going at it. Obviously we start thinking about rotations in games. We [don’t] plan on him doing that tomorrow night, or Tyler. So we’re trying to figure out what group we’ve got to really get ready for tomorrow. And when it comes back, it’s no different than, like with Tyler, trying to just incorporate guys that have been hurt. He would be like that. But his attitude’s great. He’s getting better, and I’m sure he’s frustrated inside. He hasn’t said that to me, but he has to be because he knows he’d like to have a chance to play and feels like he deserves that chance.”
Is Tyler Lundblade sitting out tomorrow just out of caution?
“Yeah. He’s getting back. If you guys watch practice, he’s out there with us, but he’s on a timetable where the doctors wanna make sure he’s slowly building back into it.”
Are you liking what you’re seeing from Lundblade basketball-wise?
“Yeah. First of all, he did a phenomenal job keeping his conditioning up, especially with a back problem that he had. He’s smart, he’s experienced, and that’s what he and Jalen would bring us more than anything, just the fact that they’ve played college basketball. They know what it’s about. Obviously the young guys haven’t, and some of these guys haven’t played at the level that we know that we’ve gotta play at.”
What was your takeaway from how Terrence Hill Jr. played against Xavier?
“I think he will learn a lot. I think he did learn a lot. I thought defensively he’s making strides each and every day. But not just Terrence, all of us have gotta get better in terms of understanding our system. We’ve got some guys that simply are in a denied stance when they should be in a gap stance. Just subtle things that they’ve gotta get right. Certain things that we’ve gotta do to make our defense work. We’ve gotta get everybody on the same page. Our ball screen defense was not very good, and that was a concern because we’ve spent so much time on that. And offensively, we took too many bad shots, quick shots. And you really do kinda expect that in the first time out. I’m curious to see how much better we’ll be there in terms of shot selection and if we can be a little bit cleaner with what we’re doing on the defensive end.”
Did the bad shots pile up once things started going poorly in the second half?
“I do. No doubt. I thought that everybody thought, “Okay, I gotta go score quick and make something happen.” And first of all, Xavier’s a good basketball team. That’s why we love playing those teams, because we do wanna get exposed in these exhibition games. There’s no doubt. If you win, you win. But I’d rather get exposed more than winning a basketball game right now, because as much as we harp on these things, sometimes it takes exposure like that to really grab their attention.”
Will the team have more of a defensive scouting plan this week?
“Yeah, we’ll have a little bit more, obviously, because we’ve got a little more live tape that we can go with. Like I said the first time, we wanted to see if some of it they could fix on their own, ’cause we’re gonna have to be able to do that. As the season goes on, we go into games, coaches are gonna add different stuff here or there. We’ve gotta be able to defend that. And we believe if we play with our principles, we can defend anything that somebody throws at us.”
Is it hard to coach a defense-first mindset when players try to save the offense with one shot late in games?
“Well, I think the tough thing is you can’t defend turnovers. We had some bad turnovers, and you can’t defend them, especially the ones we had the other night. You go back and you look, and I think they had 27 points in the first half, and I think 10 were off turnovers. So it’s understanding basketball. It’s really understanding. And I’ve always said, and Coach Knight told me this many, many years ago, he said, “You’ve got to understand what goes into losing before you can understand what goes into winning,” because the best teams never beat themselves.
“And like Mr. Haslam always reminds me, General Neyland, the team that makes the fewest mistakes win. It’s pretty simple. But it’s hard to get young guys to understand not only are you trying to win the game, but you’re trying to win every possession on both ends. If you win the most possessions, you’re gonna win. With this group, ’cause we’ve got so many new people, I’m not gonna say young because they’re not all young, but we’ve got so many new ones that they have to understand really what goes into losing. And from that, we’ll figure out how to win.”
How important is it for Miles Rubin, with his size and length, to stay out of foul trouble, and what did the tape show?
“Well, it goes back to him. Again, his way doesn’t work. He’s wanting to try to steal the ball instead of playing position. At this level, guys are gonna catch the ball. You just hope that when you catch them, then you got to guard it. You try to force them off. It’s a game of space, trying to force them off their space. But when you are fouling to do that, it’s not any good. And he doesn’t understand doing his work early yet, and he’s always playing catch up, playing from behind, and that’s what gets him in foul trouble.”
How do exhibitions against Xavier and Duke translate to growth for this team?
“That’s a great question, because I wish we had five. We practiced so much throughout the summer. And again, I think the way you get better is to play games and get exposed by other teams, play different ways, and they’re gonna throw some things at you that you need. But now we’ll see if our guys can grow from these games. We’ll see if we can make any growth from the other night, ’cause we know what we’ve got to fix. We’ve worked on it. We’ve had a long film session.
“But it goes back to what happened. We were prepared for it, but we just didn’t execute it. We’ve talked about the mindset a lot, and some of it is mindset and understanding the game. First of all, they’re all playing with probably the best group of guys they’ve ever played with. They don’t know how to play together yet. But we’ll get there. We will. And this game and the Davidson game will be another great scrimmage for us before we get ready to go in a week.”
How much will you use these exhibitions to test different lineups?
“We are doing that, ’cause analytically we’ll be able to get something from it. We just got a small dose of that right now where we really can’t tell a lot. We’re just trying to figure out, again, when the lights come on, what some of these guys want to do, and you expected the young guys to be a little bit nervous, especially the freshmen. But I just want to see us do what we practice, and we didn’t do that the other night.”
What memories come to mind about playing at Duke?
“Well, a lot. At Clemson, certainly I was in there four different times, and I grew up in the state when I watched Duke be very successful. And believe it or not, I actually interviewed for a job there one time with Coach Krzyzewski, and just the utmost respect for him, because he went in there and the first couple years weren’t great years, and turned it around and built one of the great dynasties there. And I have great respect for Jon Scheyer. I think he’s a terrific basketball coach. Being in the building there is a neat experience.
“I thought we were able to win in there our first year at Clemson, and we swept them that year. That was maybe a first for Clemson in a long time. But I just have great respect for the way Mike’s done it, and I’ve got to live that in my lifetime to see him do it. And again, I’m thankful that he gave me a chance to interview with him. I was an assistant at George Mason. And I’ve coached against Jon Scheyer, and obviously he’s done a terrific job.”
