Tennessee basketball earned its first marquee win of the regular season on Friday night knocking off Wisconsin 80-70 at the Kohl Center.
Tennessee coach Rick Barnes discussed Dalton Knecht’s big night, the Vols’ interior production and much more. Here’s everything Barnes said following the victory.
More From RTI: Three Quick Takeaways On Tennessee’s Win At Wisconsin
On Tennessee’s ability to get to the rim, helping win a game like that
“I do think that. First of all, as a great win of for us. Wisconsin is a really terrific basketball team. And I tell you, hard to guard. Incredible concepts that they have. Do a great job themselves of getting it where they want it and getting fouled, they gave us some foul trouble early. We didn’t rebound well early, but we do have the ability to spread the floor out. And because of that, we’ve got what we call ‘green light’ shooters and they see daylight, they’re going shoot it and we’ve got some guys that can get downhill with it. We got multiple guys that can play outta a ball-screen offense. We try to get down quick, early and play fast. I thought in the second half we were efficient, but we kind of got sped up when they made a couple pushes at us. But again, great win and got much respect for Wisconsin. It’s hard what they do, the way they do it. But really proud of our guys for withstanding some of the pushes they put on us.”
On what he saw from Tennessee’s Dalton Knecht to allow him to be so efficient
“I mean, he’s affective offensively. You guys know that, have seen him play and he, again, I thought they did a good job going at him early too. They were getting by him a little bit. We were trying to keep him, really just trying to contain the ball. I thought he fought, the way he played. He played a lot of minutes. And offensively, he’s a very talented player. I thought his teammates really helped him tonight. They said, hey man, we know what you do on the other end, you’ve gotta help (on defense. Because when we gotta lead there, it was getting down to, we probably had enough points after we stops. And we were getting ready to offense, defense (substitutions), Jahmai Mashack out there to guard. Dalton, he’s learning some of the, he doesn’t know how to fix it the way those other guys can. We can switch and we can switch out, X out of it on like when ‘Z’ (Zakai Zeigler) got caught down there, late in the game, he should have X’d out there again. And I called out (to Knecht), said you gotta see that. I mean, he can’t leave Zakai down there seven foot. He’ll get better with all that. I think the more he sees it on tape, he’s gonna work at it. He knows he’s gotta get better. As soon as he walked in, guys congratulated him. He said, look, I gotta get better defensively. As long as he’ll keep that attitude, he’ll be fine.”
On why this Tennessee team has been able to answer runs on the road early this season and find ways to win
“I like to think we’ve been in them a lot. And you’ve got a group of guys out there and basically other than Dalton, we had Zakai, Santi, Josiah, Jonas. they’ve been there a lot. And we had Dalton there and Dalton obviously he gives us an offensive punch on the other end. But just the fact that I think they’ve been in a lot of games like that. And I thought they stayed together and I thought they really did a good job. Because we got sped up, but we didn’t let the clock, you know, we landed the plane safely there, right the end of the shot clock a couple times and we finished it out. And I thought that’s when they were coming back. We didn’t have some good finishes on the offensive end.”
On scoring 80 points despite shooting 29% from three
“I thought Tobe’s buckets were huge. I thought they were really big. I thought he’d come in — I thought he gave us a lift, obviously rebounding the ball and I told the coaches we gotta get him in the game more. And we actually tried to isolate him and let him go at it because we’re gonna need him to do that. And we posted Dalton and let him have a chance to back it down and see what he could do there and try to surround him with shooters. I thought Tobe’s minutes when he came in there were big minutes in the game because we needed something there because give them credit, they had gotten us hurried up there a little bit, but he came in and helped us.”
On freshman forward Cade Phillips’ minutes
“Well, we love Cade. Cade’s minutes in the first half were huge, trying to protect guys. Cade’s going to be a guy — he’s much stronger than he looks. I thought he went out tonight and really handled the physicality of a game against a very physical team. And we know that he is a connector on the offensive end. He knows his role, he knows what he needs to be doing out there. I knew that when we ran the lob play, I knew he was gonna close with it because they know he’ll go get it.”
On junior forward Jones Aidoo’s night
“Jonas’ presence — people don’t realize just his presence and what, he’s 5-for-6 tonight. I thought he did a good job getting off ball-screens and getting to the rim and the middle of the ball-screen was good to us a couple different times where we were getting downhill or getting them to stay up a little bit high quick and Jonas got behind his defender. If Jonas can do those type of things for, it’s only gonna help us moving forward.”
On doubling Wisconsin in the paint
“Our game plan, because we worked on it for three days, everybody getting back down doing that. And our game plan was to play cat and mouse and once he put it down, go get it. But early we were doing a really poor job of just letting — you know, the rules say you don’t have to let ’em bang it, but we don’t wanna bail out with trying to flop or anything like that. I mean with really when you can borrow up the way the rules are, you shouldn’t get back down that deep. You really shouldn’t. What was happening, we were getting in the lane and we waited too long. When they put it on the floor, we were supposed to go and we were waiting until they bounced it, bounced it, bounced it and now it’s too late. But when we got it right, it created some issues and then there’s a lot of length out there when you get everybody in there, us coming and what we were most concerned about with where we were helping from out from the top was that 45 cut or that guy coming in from the backside to rebound it, which they got us on that a couple times, but we knew we were going to have to — at one time, we hadn’t even done it all year, I said, ‘I think we should get into a 2-3 zone’ see if we can keep everybody in the lane. Maybe we can stop them and let them hit some jump shots. But our guys kept fighting and again, they’re hard to guard. I mean, they are hard to guard because of the way they play and the physicality that they bring.”
On if he’s surprised the way this team has responded by answering runs on the road
“It’s the first time Zakai’s played on the road and he was trying too much, he was trying too hard early. Over dribbling the ball. And again, at his speed, he changes the court. I mean, he can’t help himself. He wants to get down the floor and press 94 (feet), which we love. We like that. But coming in where he needs more time is— I think they told me before the game that he could play 18 minutes. So we tried to figure it out today while we were meeting, as coaches, and I’m like we can do this all we want but if they jump on us early, he’s gonna play more in the first half. I don’t know. Again, in the last minute someone said, coach, he’s at 18 minutes. And I said, well, he’s finishing this game because if I’d taken him out. He would’ve killed me. He ended up with what, 18. But I think Chad told me to be 18 to 20. If I could have remembered that, he probably played another minute and 10 seconds or whatever. But him getting out there right now is the best thing for him. And, but we gotta get the rhythm back because he hasn’t done that with us a lot, but going on the road and any road win’s a big win. And especially against a team like that.”
On home-and-home matchups, the importance of it
“Probably the worst loss we’ve ever had at Tennessee since I’ve been there. When they came down in the pandemic (before the pandemic) and they beat us about 30 and that was a, it’s funny, that was the day that Santi arrived on campus. I think Lamonte Turner had announced he couldn’t play anymore. Josiah was a freshman and we’ve been trying ever since then to schedule this game. But they had opportunities to come up. We had opportunities and I respect Greg (Gard) and his staff so much and what they do, but I think these games are great for us. I’m, like you’re saying, I’m concerned ’cause I think as a league with Texas and Oklahoma coming in, we’re gonna have to go to 20 conference games. I’m not surprised with the teams from the west coast coming here. They won’t start talking about 22 conference games. And the only way we’re gonna be able to do this, I think— because like right now I’ve got a really good freshman class that needs to play, but they’re not ready for this right now. There’s no way they can be ready two games into the season to deal with this. So there’s a fine line. Where can we get some games where you hope to get those guys some experience? I believe that because of the way our practice schedule is now, we ought to be able to have three exhibition games, like what we had with Michigan State. Because we still need these games. I think it’s great for college basketball. I think the officials need it. And I’m saying it in a good way because think (about it). This is a high level game man. For officials that, they’ve probably have had two or three games, had a couple intrasquad scrimmages but I don’t know where it’s going to go.
I don’t. I really don’t. I know that Wisconsin— I mean I love playing, you know, we played Michigan State in the past, Wisconsin, obviously. I appreciate Greg doing it. Because when I got to Tennessee, we couldn’t get anybody to do it. You know, we’re trying to play some of these games but we settled in on it. We just didn’t think it was gonna take us long to finish the series. And again, where it goes from here, beyond, I don’t know where we go until we find out what we’re gonna do in the league with moving with to 20 conference games, which I think we’ll have to do.”
