Tennessee basketball coach Rick Barnes met with the media in Charlotte on Wednesday afternoon before the Vols went through their walk through at the Spectrum Center on the eve of the NCAA Tournament.
Barnes discussed the consistency his program has had in making the NCAA Tournament, Dalton Knecht’s impact and much more. Here’s everything that Barnes said.
More From RTI: What Saint Peter’s Coach Bashir Mason Said About Tennessee
On if concerns from the Mississippi State game linger
“Well, we have to put it out of the way. We know we didn’t play the way we wanted to play, didn’t get the result we wanted. But you always have to put it behind you, get ready for the next one in front of you.
I can tell you as a coaching staff we’ve let our guys know right here how good of an opponent we’re playing at St. Peter’s. We’ve been into film with them enough and talked about it, and it’s up to us as coaches to do our job. It’s certainly up to the players to get themselves mentally ready and focused and know we’re getting ready to play a team that’s as capable as anybody in this tournament.”
On the formula for Tennessee consistently making the NCAA Tournament
“Again, it always starts with the players. We’ve got a great administration at the University of Tennessee that provided us and our players are everything that we need. It still goes back to the work, the commitment that the players have to put into it, and we’re excited because you ask any player, I think they would tell you that they want to be a part of this event this time of year. We’re blessed to have had a lot of guys who have done what they need to do to get us back here.”
On Dalton Knecht’s impact on this year’s team
“I think it’s important, when you’ve got a guy that as good a player as he is, he would tell you too that he needs the other guys to do their part because of the attention he’s starting to get from everybody. Obviously he would be a number one target for a team getting ready to play us.
With that said he’s in a role that’s never really been in it. With all that’s come his way this year, he certainly deserves it. But I think he would tell you too that his teammates have helped him along the way. We need him to do what he does, but we need his teammates to do what they need to do to help him.”
On his thoughts on the NCAA Tournament potentially expanding
“I don’t know where the future of the intercollegiate athletics is going with leagues getting bigger, things like that. But where we are today, I don’t think you can ask a team to win more than six games to win a National Championship. It’s really demanding, if you ask me.
Or if there’s teams that are right there that are worthy to be in, maybe you could add four more for play-in games, things like that. But teams have had great years or teams — again, winning six games in this tournament is hard, it’s really, really hard.
Also, I think we do have a three-week window here where we captivate the country, and we’re in, I think, the most exciting sporting event because every state in the country can be represented some way, somehow. I’m not for expanding the tournament to make it a national champion having to win more than six games to get there.”
On if you ever know what to expect in the NCAA Tournament
“The answer is I don’t. I wish I did. I wish I knew everything that went into every player’s mindset, what he’s thinking right now with everything. I can tell you I’ve been blessed to be in this tournament a lot, and if it were up to me, we’d win every game. We’d have never lost.
A lot goes into it. It’s different. It’s hard, really, as a coach. You like to feel like you can get a read. Sometimes you think you’ve got a read and it’s wrong. Sometimes you don’t think you have the read and it turns out better than you thought. So I wish I knew that. If I did, I would fix it all. But I’m hoping that our guys again understand it’s truly an honor, and it’s a blessing that they got themselves here. When it’s all said and done, you want to look back and know that your work and everything you did, you left it out there, and there’s no regrets.”
On being in Charlotte as a Hickory, North Carolina native
“You know, I’ve been gone so long, but I am from North Carolina. I’m from Hickory. So much of me, I like to think I’m the same back then.
I was telling stories back there, I was in the tenth grade, I came to the old Charlotte Coliseum, and I think the night I was there, I watched Pistol Pete Maravich score 49 points against Clemson. They had the leading scorer in the ACC, a guy named Butch Zatezalo.
My first game as a college coach was in the old Charlotte Coliseum when I was at Davidson. I remember telling recruits, 11,666. And I also told the story that was the first time I was personally able to meet Coach Smith. I watched his team beat John Kuester’s Boston University team right there. So I do have a lot of great memories.
I tell everybody, when you grow up in Hickory and you really wanted to impress a girl, you drove her to Charlotte and took her to the Open Kitchen, and I think it’s still there. If you did that, the girls knew you were serious.
I remember when the Charlotte Town Mall opened up and all of that. So Charlotte to me was a big, big city. My first year in high school, we integrated the schools, and we went from a 3A school to a 4A school, and we played all of our games in Charlotte. That was a long ride back then because we 40 went all the way. Cleared 77.
I do have a lot of great memories in this state. I tell everybody without question North Carolina has got the best barbecue, and I will always stand by that, I can tell you.”
On Jordan Gainey’s recruitment
“I told his dad, first of all, I want your son to be a part of it. It all started when I was at upstate, that he would come back to Knoxville and work out at our facility for two years, Lamonte Turner and Jordan Bowden. He would work out with those two guys that had left the program. Every time they said, Coach, if this guy ever transfers, you want him. He’s one of us. He would be great here.
With that said, I told Jordan, and I thought the family really handled the situation at upstate well because they were really appreciative of Dave Dickerson, giving him a chance and a scholarship. He stayed two years, and then after that he felt like it was time for him to go. I told Coach Gainey, I said, look — he said, Coach, I don’t want to recruit him. He said, you know I would love him to be here, but I want him to be here because he wants to be here. I said, We’re going to recruit him. We don’t get him, you might be looking for a job. I’m kidding with him. I used to kid with him.
But I knew one thing off the bat, his mother wanted him to be there. That I knew. And the more you’re around the family, you knew how close knit they were. But I did want Jordan to feel that we weren’t taking anything for granted, that we wanted to recruit him and we wanted him to be a part of our program.
So we recruited him more so than his dad as a staff. Personally I did. But talking to his mom too, again, she said the same thing. We want him — this is where he wants to be, we want him to make that decision. When he did, we were obviously excited about it.”
On many old coaches retiring since NIL and the transfer portal began, if still finds coaching fun
“It’s always fun when you’ve got a group of guys that you love being with every day. The one thing that I thought, I read an article where Coach Saban had made the comment after his team also, the way they acted, I thought about that immediately after our game in the SEC Tournament against Mississippi State.
I walked in the locker room, the first person I saw that beat me off the court was Zakai Zeigler, and he was crying. I think, as long as you’ve got players that you know that really care and they want to really work at being the very best they can be, I think if players are just playing for the sheer money of it, I think it would drive all coaches crazy. But we’ve got decisions as coaches to make. We’ve got to do our intel there. We’ve got to let guys know that, hey, we don’t want them to come because of the money. We want them to come to be a part of a program we’re trying to build.
We also have — we think that we have a great freshman class that we’re excited about, and we think now, when we’re done in this tournament, it’s going to be their turn to step in there. But the best part about coaching, I think all those guys, which to me it’s sad because I’ve got so much respect for Jim Boeheim, Roy, and Coach K and other coaches, that it is a different game. It is.
Now the only positive thing I can say about it is they would all tell you that we used to have to recruit guys for two, three years and maybe not get them. Now because of the transfer portal and the NIL, it could be a ten-day process and you move on. That’s the only — I guess if there is a positive for what’s going on right now, it’s that. You don’t have to put as much time in recruiting, and you find out real quick whether you’re in or out and move on to the next one, whatever it may be.
I think that all of us would tell you that we’re probably not happy to where it is today, the way it is, because we don’t really know what’s going to happen five, ten years from now with where we are right now, and I think that us that are older are probably concerned that in some ways — again, I don’t think any of us have ever had a problem with guys making money, but in the long run, how is it going to affect when you get older and all of this is shut down.”
On if teams from one-bid leagues have an advantage because they’ve already played win-or-go home games
“Again, but they didn’t, and they are here. When you look at the teams that are here, they’ve earned it. I don’t care if you’re playing in this tournament, I have a great deal of respect for the basketball committee, and I learned it a long time ago from Dave Gavitt, and obviously Danny was on my staff. I know how hard that committee’s working to try to be fair, to get everybody in it.
All they do, I don’t know how it all comes about other than the fact I know how hard they work at trying to get it right. So if you’re in it, you’ve earned it. And if you’re in it, you’ve got to believe that you’ve got a chance to advance and move on.”
On assistant coach Justin Gainey being from North Carolina and playing at North Carolina State
“Well, I just always tell Justin, I said, I appreciate you. I think you helped me win eight games. You know, kidding with him all the time, because I watched him and had great respect because he was so highly competitive. His high school coach, Freddie Johnson, was my first year at Davidson College, Eddie Biedenbach said, you’ve got to grow our camp.
I found out that Freddie was taking a bunch of kids to the Duke camp, and I called him and said, we’ll pay you $150. I’ll give you $10 for every kid you bring. I think he brought 125. Eddie thought that was great. He didn’t know he got 10 extra dollars to bring each kid.
But watching him in my time at Clemson, competing against him, then watching him on the road. He’s more than ready to be a head coach at any level. He’s highly committed, as anybody I’ve ever been around. He’s got a great feel, a great relationship with players. Him coming back here, I’m sure he’s, like anybody be, being hit up for a lot of tickets.
I’ll tell you, when we hired him, I knew right from the beginning we hit a home run. I think I’ve got the best staff in the country. All of them, I think, are ready to be head coaches if they wanted to. Certainly Justin has had his opportunities. He’s a guy that I know that, when he makes that move, I know he’ll make the right decision.”
On how they plan to use Dalton Knecht against Saint Peter’s
“I would never shut him down if it was up to me. We have different things we do to try to get him going and making it hard for teams just to sit in one area waiting on him to think. We try to move him around as much as we can.
He’ll have to do a lot of that on his own. He knows he’s going to have to find different ways to score because they could — we think that they could show us a lot of zone tomorrow and there could be some different things.
At this time of year, you’ve got to be prepared for everything. Again, they’re a really good, hard-nosed, tough — I’ve got great respect for northeast basketball because of my time at Providence. They’re a tough-minded team that they know how they play, they know what they do. There’s no doubt they’ve got guys that I know are going to look at a challenge and say, hey, let me take that challenge. So Dalton’s going to have to work, but his teammates are going to have to do their job too to help them do what needs to get done.”
