Everything Rick Barnes said about disappointing loss to Florida

On if Vols freshman guard Jaden Springer is the most important player on Tennessee’s team:

“He’s important. He’s important defensively as much as anything. Keon (Johnson) got lit up tonight defensively because he doesn’t understand ball-screen defense. When we really had a chance to get momentum, we were switching and for some reason he just ran out from underneath the basket and left the guy he had switched on, let the big fella dunk the ball. Our guards turned it over way too much. Santi (Vescovi) got popped pretty good in his hip. We left it up to him whether or not he wanted to play, and he wanted to. We could tell without him, the little bit he was there, you saw what happened when he wasn’t out there. And Jaden not out there. We just threw the ball, turned the ball over in ways that you can’t imagine, to be quite honest, at this level. Supposedly guys that understand how to play basketball.”

On why Springer didn’t play:

“He hasn’t practiced since the last game (against Vanderbilt on Saturday). And during shoot around and stuff yesterday he couldn’t go. He was just gimping around (with a left ankle injury).”

On what he saw from Tennessee in the paint:

“I didn’t see anything good tonight. Davonte Gaines, I’m proud of him, what you saw him do tonight. And it’s my fault, probably, that too many guys get comfortable. I didn’t see anything good at all, to be quite honest with you.”

On if he was surprised by the fact his team didn’t fight back after going down early:

“Yeah, that’s exactly what we talked about. There gets to be a point, you have to get leadership from your seniors. Fulky and Yves can’t hide behind anybody. They can’t. There are a lot of teams that we beat up on with that last group a couple years ago. But now those guys are the ones that, when you’re in a situation like that, those young guys are waiting on those guys (the seniors) to lead them, because they’ve played more games. And they haven’t done it. All we’ve asked Yves to do, to simplify for him, is to play defense and rebound. He hasn’t done that. At some point in time we have to make some shots, too, obviously. We just didn’t get the leadership. We don’t have the leadership, obviously. And we have to get it.

“But again, I could tell you this, it makes me sick to watch a group of guys not play hard. As a coach, it’s probably the hardest thing to stomach as a coach, when you know the other team is playing harder in every facet of the game, beating you every which way, and you don’t respond. That’s how I felt tonight anyway. And that’s the most disappointing part in the game.”

On not matching Florida’s intensity:

“You know what? I felt like, watching the game, from the beginning I wasn’t happy. From the beginning. I think I took Fulky out early because the guys were looking at him. He’s a guy that we’re looking at him. And I’m not putting it on him, because it’s not. But he’s an important cog to this wheel. But the fact of the matter is, we kept acting like OK, we’re going to get this going, we’re going to get this going. But it’s the way our guards, I mean, our guard play was horrendous. You think about it, the turnovers, the missed shots.

“What bothered me at halftime, I kept telling them early in the game, Fulky and Yves, they do need to touch the ball. But it’s up to them to get involved. And they were allowing themselves to get pushed around. The scouting report is easy right now on John Fulkerson. Push him off the lane, go double him. And all we’ve asked him to do is not stand there and do that. Get moving, get active. We can roll him in there, we can run him in there. But he’s got to do it. Yves, again, right now he’s just not doing the things that we need him to do.

“Like we told the team, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know what we’re going to do. But I can assure you, we are going to change the lineup because of what you just said. That’s what disappoints me the most. That those guys didn’t find a way to at least scratch it out and make some changes. They came out of the timeouts, they said all of the right things, but their actions didn’t follow it up.”

On the pressure Florida generated in the backcourt:

“You think about it, we start the game with three guys that have played the point at some time in their career. We told them exactly what they were going to do. Do not put all the pressure on Santi. You guys get down the court, get it and go with it. I said it for three, four days. Whatever it is. And the wings kept running off. They keep putting all the pressure on Santi. Believe me, they did exactly what we talked about and what we worked on. But when Santi was getting double-teamed, those other wings to start with were nowhere to be found. That’s really disappointing. That tells you that you’re not locked in. That tells you that you’re just going through the motions. And believe me, we proved tonight that we’re not good enough to go through the motions.”

On Tennessee’s offensive issues:

“We didn’t run any offense. We got down the floor, we didn’t get where we were supposed to be. We didn’t flow. That goes back to point guard play. They’re going after Santi. Santi is great off the ball. But those other two guys have to take charge at that time. We don’t want to fight to give Santi the ball to get our offense started. We don’t have to do that. We work too much the other way. But when the lights go on, we have a couple guys that refuse to do what they need to do. That’s very frustrating to be quite honest with you. You’re playing with three guys that have played (point guard) and you’re coming off the bench with a fourth guy that played the point. And they’re like OK, leave it to him (Vescovi) to do all this. It’s not fair to him.”