Tennessee basketball returned to the court after a 12-day break on Tuesday night, dominating Norfolk State 87-50 at Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center. The Vols got a complete performance and dominated the turnover battle and the glass.
Following the win Tennessee coach Rick Barnes discussed the complete performance, where the team is at entering conference play and much more. Here’s everything Barnes said.
More From RTI: Three Quick Takeaways From Tennessee’s Victory Over Norfolk State
On what he liked about Dalton Knecht’s performance in the final 10 minutes of the first half when Tennessee went on a run
“I thought he got back to playing. And he understands. And I do think he’s learned a lot in the last couple weeks, where he’s realized he’s gonna have to work harder with getting open. Might have to work hard to get to his space, but we need him to be aggressive. And, and he, again, that was good. I do think he’s trying defensively. He had one blunder tonight where he said he heard a ball screen and he jumped to the side and let person drive right by him. But other than that, I thought he was really locked in and trying to do all the things we talked about with him.”
On if he was concerned about Tennessee not being locked in after such a long Christmas break
“Yeah, I think it’s maybe the longest break I’ve had, personally. I don’t remember ever having five days off. I would tell you this, I think it should be a requirement for all Division I basketball teams. I think guys need time off at Christmas. And we had such a grueling pre-season with the travel that we’ve done and with the schedule that we play. And I do think not only was it good physically, it was good mentally. And I thought everybody came back and good spirits.
“Jonas hasn’t practiced as much. He strained his calf the first night he was here (after the break). That’s a tough one to get over. And he needs reps in practice. That’s when he plays his best basketball. But again, we talked about, we know now we’re into conference play and you want to go into it trying to put together a complete game. And the guys really understand the mindset is that if we’re gonna get consistent, we gotta know what we’re gonna get every night from those guys. But again, we take our shots, we make them, we miss them. That’s as long as we keep taking them. But defensively, I thought our guys really stayed locked in and did a lot of good things on the defensive end. I thought our post guys did a good job getting out there on the ball-screen covers for the most part.
“And to play against that team, you look at them on paper, they’re well coached. They drive the ball really hard. They finish well and they do a great job. They get about 25% of the points from the free-throw line. Even though they don’t shoot a lot of threes, they’ve got guys capable of doing it. And they’re a methodical team, too. They’re gonna run their stuff, execute it well. We knew that and, again, we played well tonight. We really did. In terms of maybe as close to a complete game overall. We just need to make layups. I mean, we can’t leave those on the floor, on the board. But again, I thought the focus has been good since we got back.”
On what Jonas Aidoo needs to do to get back to be productive like he was earlier in the season
“He hasn’t practiced very much. And I’ve said all along Jonas is a guy, because as much as we play in practice, the game is still faster in some ways. And it’s not like you get to stop it, redo it and all that. Jonas, what, played, what was he tonight … 2-for-8 and rebounded the ball with two turnovers in, how many minutes did he have there? 11 minutes. But again, Jonas will get back. He will. I’m not worried about it with him. I just wanna make sure we get him totally healthy.”
On how close that game was to Zakai Zeigler’s best basketball at Tennessee
“He is getting better and better. You look at it, he’s starting to see the game in a great way, helping his teammates get better. And he’s starting to see it. And that’s what we want to see defensively. That’s where he is a difference maker. And he gets up there in the back court and, (each) game, he seems to bother somebody back there for a little bit, which is a good thing to try to disrupt the other team. But, do I think he’s all the way back? I don’t, but I think he’s getting there.”
On Zakai Zeigler’s strong play since the Maui Invitational
“I think it goes back to practice. He does practice hard but the games are faster, quicker. We try to simulate game situations as much as we can but still, we can’t always dictate what the other team is doing to do. I think learning how to get back to reacting and reading defenses the way he has to at that position. But also knowing he’s a guy that when he is open, we think he should shoot it. He also wants to get the big guys involved. He wants to get his teammates involved. He is finding that balance where he really does. How many assists did he have tonight? (Four). He should have had a couple more. We missed some layups that I thought e assisted on that we should have gotten. Overall, it is just the way he is learning and seeing the game. He will keep getting better with it, too.”
On Zakai Zeigler’s three-point shooting and teams not thinking that’s a strength
“Yeah, it does (surprise me coaches would say that). When we recruited him out of high school, we thought he was a scorer. We thought he was a dynamic defender. We think anybody that has that size like that has to change the game on the other end down there and play 94 feet. He is one of the few small guys that I saw years that was willing to do that. I have watched him back during our individual workouts during the summer, the guy made 90 out of 100 NBA threes. He made 49 straight NBA threes. I am not sure where anybody would question him shooting the ball. Coaches would tell you over there I’m like, ‘Why won’t he shoot it more?’ When he sees daylight, he is one of those guys that you think it is going in. I am not sure how to answer that because I hope they leave him open. I hope he gets those step-in shots. I do.”
On things Santiago Vescovi does well but others don’t pick up on
“Defensively, what he does to fix plays. He is a guy that single-handedly that can cover a lot of mistakes for his teammates. I would say that he and the older guys do it pretty well. Santi really anticipates well. He is so akin to scouting reports. He knows it. He watches it. Once a team runs a play, if they run it again, he is already thinking about how he can defend it different and how something can happen. His basketball IQ defensively is there. Offensively, his movement. he is another guy that I think should shoot more threes. If you ask me how many do I think we should shoot — if guys are open and guys we watch shoot at a high level and our numbers aren’t good because we have guys that struggling — that have struggled. I am not worried about that because I watch us in practice. One thing I have learned over the years, if you don’t make them in practice you usually don’t make them in the game. But if you make them during practice, you feel good that you’re not going to make them all but you have a chance to make them. I watch our guys shoot in practice and make a lot of them. We make a lot of them. I will tell you this, we have to rebound those long rebounds. We have to do a better job of that. That is one thing we do have to do a better job with.”
On what Freddie Dilione needs to do to get more consistent playing time
“Consistency. That’s what it’s about. I mean, every day I tell those guys, I use the term— I don’t want any boxes of cracker jacks. I don’t want any surprises. I want to know what we’re going to get every day. And I think you see it in practice if there’s a process that we believe in, we go through and you go back to Santi and Josiah and Zakai— and they’re all old. I think Freddie, not unlike a lot of freshmen, comes in and it is so much different than he probably thought.
But understanding that you’ve got to continue to get better every day. You can’t stay where you are. You can’t plateau this time of year, obviously, but learning the game and learning the urgency of it— there’s not a guy on his team that doesn’t love Freddie and there’s not one guy on this team that doesn’t want to see him (do) what he did tonight. If he could just give us that. I was surprised that JP played five (straight) minutes. I would’ve never thought he could be out there five minutes. But it goes back, we’re doing things in practice with him, making him get out of his comfort zone, making him learn how to fight through the cardio toughness part of it. And Freddie, it is just a consistency and again, I can tell you everybody in this program is pulling for him to get it.”
On what it says about their defense to hold the opposing team to just one assist on 22 turnovers
“Well, again, they are a driving team. They get, I think probably 25% of those points off free throws. And you look at their numbers, they’re an excellent free throw shooting team. And you look at even, I think they have four guys over 36% from the three, but they really execute. But they are a driving team and they put their head down and they’re good at it and they got in there and, again, trying to get fouled and they finished some nice shots in there. But that would be my only answer tonight, where they were driving the ball hard and trying to get fouled and you’re not going to have as many assists when you’re playing all off the bounce.”
On what he likes, needs to see improved about his team entering SEC play
“I would say coming through the— if I went back and thought about where we— the schedule’s been great. I give it to coach Polinsky. I thought he did a great job trying to put our schedule together in terms of our, like these buy games here. We really searched out to get quality teams. And the score won’t indicate tonight how much of a quality team Norfolk State is. I mean, if you could go back and look at who they’ve won games against and what they’ve done, and we knew when we played a team like Tarleton State, the physicality that they were going to bring— we wanted that in it. We, obviously, wanted to try to play the top 150 we can in our buy games. But the only thing that we had no control over, to be quite honest with you, was the (North) Carolina game coming back from Maui. We would never put a game like that there. We wouldn’t do that, but that’s really the worst 20 minutes that we’ve played all year. But again, I’m not taking anything away from Carolina because they were great that night and they made us look bad. But it’s been a good schedule for us. But you can throw it all out the window now. SEC conference play, it’s extremely hard to win at home and it’s extremely hard to win on the road. Chris Beard has done a fabulous job already at Ole Miss, got them off one of their best starts ever and he’s got guys that are playing with the kind of passion he coaches with.
And I don’t think there’s an easy game at all in this league, but I don’t think it is. I didn’t even realize this until I was walking out tonight and on court and I saw where Creighton, who everybody knows is a great team. They’re 0-2 to start the league (Big East). It’s that kind of league basketball around the country right now. And our league’s not going to be any different.”
