Everything Rick Barnes said about Tennessee’s loss to Auburn

On how they’ll use the week off before next Sunday’s game against Florida:

“We’re going to have to. We’re going to have to get back and, again, it’s really hard to talk about competitive fire when you don’t feel like your whole team is bringing it. I didn’t think that today. We’ve talked more about that as much as anything, of anything we’ve coached since we’ve been at Tennessee. I don’t understand the inconsistencies because there are enough guys that played enough basketball right now. But this week we have to go back, take a good, hard look. All of us. Everybody in the program. What can I do on my part to make this program what it should be, what we expect from it? And see if we can use this week to get better.”

On only getting to the free throw line 10 times:

“Well, you have to be aggressive to do that. You just said the game plan. Get back, rebound, rebound the ball. And we talked about it. We had rebounds at times where we got stripped with it. The fact of the matter is, you know, you can get fouled in the post and you try to work hard for your space on the court. As opposed to just letting people shove you around. Then you get the ball, I think John had four turnovers today. He shouldn’t be turning the ball over four times. He shouldn’t. Josiah had a bad turnover. It’s the bad turnovers you have to eliminate. But I go back to that being locked in, understanding that every possession matters. Competing like every possession matters on both ends. Not when you’re making shots and feeling good, but when things aren’t going well. Can you continue to compete and put yourself in position? I told Keon there, that last three, we’ve talked to him a lot about it. That’s where he should’ve gone to the rim and we could’ve made it a one-possession game right there. You just go back, little things. The freshmen are being put in positions that, honestly, they shouldn’t have to be. If our older, more experienced guys would do more. Just do a little bit more. Not a whole lot. Just a little bit more. Not put so much pressure on those guys, feeling like they have to do everything.”

On why the issues they continue to talk about aren’t getting fixed:

“You know what? I think confidence has something to do with that. I think that fear has something to do with it. I think there are some guys that are looking around that had high expectations of themselves and thinking, hey, it’s not going the way I wanted it to go. And they’re not totally locked in. And now understanding that some roles have changed. The way we thought we would be playing, we’re not playing that way because of production. So the disconnect is where the guys are able to get out of their own way and listen to what is going on in the game and understand they have a role to play. If we would just simply do that, get guys to play their role the way they should play it, we would be OK. If we could just do that. Guys are supposed to make plays, take care of the ball. The guys shouldn’t be turning the ball over at an alarming rate. They shouldn’t be doing it. So you ask the question why are they doing it? And as much time as we spend talking about it, at some point in time you have to stop talking about it. And it just gets down to a competitive spirit and a competitive fire.”

On if this team has met his expectations:

“Absolutely not. The fact is, I expect our team to get better and better and better as we go on. I expect the mistakes to come down, down, down. If you’ve got a problem rebounding the ball, I would expect that to be fixed in terms of what we do to try to fix it. But when the lights come on, you’ve got to go do it. Plain and simple. The fact is we’re not fixing the things we keep talking about. Maybe we don’t have the ability to do it, I don’t know. You start asking that question. What do we have to do? Do we have to make changes going forward in our program to do things? Because we’ve got to be able to rebound the ball better than we have been to this point. And it’s plain and simple. And we’ve got to take care of the ball better. That’s plain and simple. You do those two things. Again, more aggressive, the fouls the second half. We were fouling, they were driving, putting their head down, picking on certain guys. We had breakdowns on the defensive end. And we leave the timeout, we make everybody repeat what we’re in. They say it then they go out and they don’t execute it. That’s, again, to me part of the competitive spirit. You know exactly what you’re supposed to do. If, you’re supposed to switch on a ball screen, you do it. And if you don’t, you’re not locked in. What are you thinking about? Where are you? We’ve got way too much of that.”

On Tennessee giving up a dunk coming out of a timeout after cutting the lead to six:

“Keon didn’t switch. That was Keon’s play.”

On Keon Johnson working more in the post going forward:

“I can assure you we’re going to work on that more, because we’ve given these other guys enough time to do it. We’ve got some things. To ask him to do that, maybe this week will give us a chance to do some of that.”

On Tennessee’s defense in the second half:

“A couple guys, I thought, Keon, that breakdown was a breakdown. It’s not that. It’s still the one-on-one defense. I thought VJ was not affective at all on the defensive end. He was getting blown bye. I thought Santi tried to battle and do some things there. Overall, again, obviously we were fouling. (Allen) Flanigan, everybody knows he wants to go left. Everybody knows it. I mean, everybody knows it. They know it. To keep letting him get to his strong hand, that’s just not being locked in on the scouting report. And that goes back to two words: Mental toughness. Competitive spirit. Competitive fire. You name it. That’s what that gets back to.”