Rick Barnes is returning to the past this week as the Vols play in the NCAA Tournament. The veteran head coach is back in his home state of North Carolina and is now facing his former team Texas in the Round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament.
The Vols are facing the Longhorns for the third time in as many seasons after splitting the first two matchups in the now defunct Big 12-SEC Challenge ahead of the more significant NCAA Tournament matchup.
Meeting with the media on Friday, Barnes discussed his time at Texas, this Longhorns team and much more. Here’s everything Barnes said.
More From RTI: Tennessee Basketball Opens As Favorites Against Texas In NCAA Tournament
On Tennessee’s athletic department being more stable now compared to two years ago
“Dave Hart interviewed me back in 1985 or ’86, when I was an assistant at Ohio State and he was an Associate AD at East Carolina getting ready to become the AD, and we had known each other through that and me in the ACC.
Actually before the final week or so that I was at Texas, we had started talking a little bit indirectly. So Dave, when he hired me, he said, we really need to be able to program. He said we have good teams here. We’ve got a great tradition. We’re looking for stability. We’re looking for consistency.
I can tell you our first year there we struggled with our fan base. I grew up three hours from Knoxville. I had no idea the support the volunteers got, not only in basketball, but in football, in every sport. It’s truly amazing. I’ve never been around a fan base like what we have. That was kind of my marching orders to do that.
So we set out to do that. We targeted some young guys we wanted to go after and tried to bring in five or six guys we were going to build around, and we were able to do that and got it going. As you mentioned, there’s been some different ADs in and out, once Dave stepped away from it.
This administration is the best I’ve ever been around when you think about Randy Boyd as the president of our UT system, and Donde Plowman, I’ve never been around anybody on campus that’s led the way she has. Danny white was the first AD hired by the president and the chancellor, and what he has done in the time that he’s done it, you talk about a makeover, it’s amazing what he’s done and what he’s done for every sport.
He said, we want to be one of the best in the country, and I’ve got to do my job to get the budget where it needs to be, facilities and all that, and they have worked night and day to do that.
Tennessee, I’m telling you, it’s a special place. It really is. I said it last night. I’ve been blessed from the time I’ve gotten there. It’s just all around from a university standpoint, I can’t imagine there’s a better place in the country right now to be associated with.”
On what he remembers about hiring Rodney Terry as an assistant coach
“One thing I’ve always done since the time I’ve been able to be head coach, I’ve always relied on my assistant coaches to help hire who we hire because I think the chemistry of the staff is certainly one of the most important things. Frank had been with me, and I’d known Frank.
He was talking about Rodney. They were friends. He just always talked and said, hey, if we ever get a chance to hire someone, a young guy that I think is really, really good is Rodney. But I do remember that Frank told me that he — Frank did ask me what would happen if Rodney took the Oklahoma job. I just said out of my relationship and my respect for Kelvin — Kelvin and I have known each other forever. I said I wouldn’t do that. That’s just the way I thought at that time.
Then a year later, we had an opening, and Rodney was the only guy we really talked to about it and hired him.”
On how much more security they have this season with Zakai Zeigler healthy
“Z has been such a huge part of our — I’ve said it many times, when we recruited him, we thought we were going to redshirt him. After two days, we thought maybe we should redshirt Kennedy. From the time he walked on campus, we had no idea.
We knew he’d been good that last week at the Peach Jam. We really had no idea he was going to do that. His DNA has impacted our program more than any player than since we’ve been at Tennessee, maybe anybody I’ve coached. What he does and what you see him do out there, he’s doing it every day in practice.
Yeah, when you’ve got a guy that you know is going to play like that and give it to you every night and he’s going to be a guy that his teammates totally respect, I guess as a coach going to the game, the biggest thing is you hope he doesn’t get into foul trouble and doesn’t get hurt because he means so much to us.”
On his relationship with Tom Izzo
“In this business, we’re kind of the same era. Tom is — we met in Columbus, Ohio, when he was an assistant at Michigan State. I was an assistant at Ohio State and since that time. Then we went on the trip, and that was a great trip for so many of us.
Going over there, we all loved it. You talk about coaching, and we had teams and we’re trying to win it as much as we possibly could. I remember that was the first time in Ohio.
The next time I saw Tom we were in Detroit, and I watched a high school game in Detroit, and I went over to watch this young guy play. Tom walked in with Jud Heathcote. I’m watching this guy shoot some air balls, and I don’t even know if Tom remembers this. I kept hearing Jud say, you’ve got me here seeing this guy? I’m watching this guy, and he makes a couple of threes and shoots another air ball. I remember Jud Heathcote saying, you bring Gary Williams up here, he will fire you.
I go back and tell Gary, Gary said, what do you think about the kid, and I told him. He said, well, I’m not going to go see him play. I didn’t realize until years later that I was set up because it was Steve Smith. Jud and Tom, one of them set me up. I did learn a lesson not to listen to other people.
But Tom, we played the last two years in a closed scrimmage, and we played the exhibition game this year for the Maui relief fund. He loves it. You can’t help but be around him. He cares so much about the game. Our friendship has been there for a long time, and I think it always will be.”
On his reaction when he saw Texas as a potential opponent on the bracket
“I will tell you this, when the bracket came out, honestly all I looked at was St. Pete. I tell our team, as soon as the meeting is over with, we come out and talk about this four-team tournament here in Charlotte. Again, I said it last night. I have yet to look at the full bracket, but for some reason, when our number came up, I’m like will it be Clemson, or will it be Texas?
I don’t know if they do that intentionally. I don’t know. But it’s always tough playing people that you know that know you — we know each other. There’s not going to be a lot of secrets now. We’ve been around each other, all of us. You look at his staff, there’s a lot of guys on that staff that have been a big part of my career. I’m just blessed that I was able to spend that time with them.
I think in all honesty, do you want to match up with your friends — like talking about Tom, I don’t particularly look forward to that. Even though we didn’t work together, we’ve known each other longer than I’ve known anybody on that staff. I don’t look forward to it, but we all know we have a job to do, and when we toss it up, we’re going to try to do what we do, and that’s try to win a basketball game.”
On North Carolina State’s DJ Burns and his time as a freshman at Tennessee
“One, he’s got a wonderful family. Obviously we thought D.J. could be a player. There’s no doubt, or we wouldn’t have offered him the scholarship when we did.
If you really want to see D.J., you should get with my strength and conditioning coach. He has a picture on his phone when he left Tennessee, you wouldn’t recognize him. D.J., just like he does now, practice. He can score, he’s got great hands, knew how to get the ball where he wanted to do it.
One thing that I really respect about D.J., even when he left, he would often send texts back to people just saying how much he learned while he was at Tennessee, and he understands more now than he did then, which it happens. It really does.
When he left, went to Winthrop, I thought he got some great people around him. Again, he’s got a wonderful family. I’m not surprised because the guy knows how to score the basketball, and he knows, whether you want to say he’s in shape or out of shape, he knows what he’s doing when he’s out there and he knows how to get around and be effective. So I’m not really surprised by it.”
On the comfort of having two elite defensive guards before facing Texas
“Again, it’s going to be more than those two. Certainly Max can get going. We recruited Tyrese. We know what he’s capable of obviously. Dylan Disu was in our league for a little bit and recruited Dylan. We know their personnel obviously.
One, it’s going to be very — they’re going to play extremely hard, expecting to be out there just like they did last night. They did a great job of really forcing their physicality, I thought, on Colorado State, and I expect pretty much the same thing. So we’ll have to be ready and have a number of different guys that can try to guard those guys.”
On how hard these quick turnarounds are from a scouting perspective
“I think they would say the same thing. They probably have seen a lot of the stuff that we’ve seen, and we do some similar things, I mean, some things we’ve used in the past, Rodney does. So some of it, you’ll be familiar with.
I mean, we have today, and I think this time, the biggest thing you want, you want your guys as fresh as you can keep them both mentally and physically. You want to obviously make sure everybody’s healthy.
We’ll have time. It’s different in terms of maybe the speed that you would normally work with getting ready, and you won’t do that as much because, again, you want them to be as fresh as they can come gametime.
We’ll get it covered. We started on them today like we normally will with whoever we played, and we’ll have all day today to have what we need to do, and we always do. We’ll have tomorrow to do the same thing.”
On what he looks for in the game’s opening minutes to see if his team is ready to go
“I think the first four minutes of games are extremely important. I think that you do — coaches, when we start, we’re all sitting around thinking, are we going to be ready mentally, physically? Are we going to shoot the ball well and all of that?
Tom and I were actually talking a little bit this morning, and he made a great comment. He said, there’s nights when people don’t think you play well, you play really well, but you don’t shoot well. There’s nights when you shoot well that you don’t play real well. Shooting makes up for a multitude of sins sometimes.
At the start of the game, you’re looking for the details because you know early in the game what you’ve talked about and you want to make sure. With that said, you’ve got to be prepared for them to come with something else, a little tweak here and there you want to see your players on the edge. You want to see them locked into the details that you talked about and know that — I think this time of year we all have a pretty good idea of what you’d better expect. If you don’t, you won’t be here very long.”
On Zakai Zeigler’ DNA, what that looks like off the court
“What you see on the court is what we see on the court every day. He’s going to go at it. He’s no different. That’s why I think he’s consistent because he does it every day.
His teammates, they love him because — I mean, that’s hard to do. You talk about mental toughness, to be able to bring it every day and do what he does. He’s fearless. I think he’s been through a lot more stuff, difficulties, things off the court in his life, more so than anything on the court. I think he takes nothing for granted.
He’s always been a fighter. You talk to his mom, and from the time he was small, he didn’t run from it. He embraced it. He’s fearless and really competitive.
One of his biggest faults is, when he’s not going well, he’s too hard on himself. He really expects it. You watch this — like if you were at — tomorrow when you have a shootaround or today at the end, I can assure you, when we’re done, he’ll be one of the last guys that will still be there shooting. He’s a guy that’s going to come back and put his time in.
If you watch how he went through his rehabilitation from a year ago to get his knee right, it tells you a lot about him too because he thought he could play two months before they let him play. It’s just his mental makeup. It’s infectious. I think it’s rubbed off on some guys.
Again, he’s meant more to this program than people can even imagine because talking about the little things in the locker room and all that. I think, when he walks in the locker room, he’s the same every day.
One of the great things about him is he is consistent. I’ve never seen him in a bad mood other than when he gets mad at himself. I’ve learned to tweak him a little bit to where he’ll get mad at me. But I love the guy. I don’t know what it will be like now not having him because he’s been such an important part of our team.”
