Old friends meet on the sidelines Saturday night in Charlotte as Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes faces his former assistant coach and Texas head coach Rodney Terry in the Round of 32.
Terry met with the media in Charlotte on Friday and discussed his relationship with Barnes, what stands out about this Texas team and much more ahead of the critical NCAA Tournament matchup. Here’s everything Terry said.
More From RTI: Scouting The Texas Longhorns Ahead Of Saturday Night’s Round of 32 NCAA Tournament Matchup
On if he would rather not play Tennessee in the NCAA Tournament because of his relationship with Rick Barnes
“I would completely agree with that. Coach is family to me. He’s one of my biggest mentors. He’s been incredible throughout my career. We love each other.
But we also, at the end of the day, I’m super competitive, he’s super competitive. When the game starts, it will be about our players and the guys on the floor.
That’s kind of the relationship we have. We talk often and congratulate. Last time I had interaction with him was congratulating him on winning the regular season conference. It’s always really hard to do. He has a great ball club this year.”
On Rick Barnes saying the Texas job was Rodney Terry’s dream job as a young assistant
“Absolutely. I worked at UNC-Wilmington for a great coach and a mentor as well, Jerry Wainwright. When an opportunity presented itself at Texas, it was a no-brainer. I pretty much sprinted there.
I was offered a job by Kelvin Sampson at Oklahoma, and I ended up turning the job down prior to taking the Texas job. Yeah, it was a lifelong dream and an incredible opportunity to work with Coach Barnes over the years that we were together. We had incredible success. We did everything except win a National Championship.”
On what Dylan Disu has meant to the Texas program, his growth
“Disu the latter part of last season really came on for us from a scoring standpoint. He had been a star in his role prior to that in terms of being a guy that’s a cerebral player, cerebral defender, rim protector, but really stepped it up from a scoring standpoint the last part of that season. And going into this spring and summer, we challenged him to be a guy to also continue to take it to another level. Instead of making one three a game. We may want three or four threes a game.
Gave us great inside presence last year as well. I think he was injured the first part of the season, coming back from surgery and things of that nature there. But he was really engaged with our team from the very beginning of the year. He was basically an assistant coach, and when it was time for him to play, I thought that was a real smooth transition because he had been so vocal and so involved with the team that he just stepped right in. It was a really good transition for us coming off of the injury and not playing the first part of the season.
He just took off. He really worked hard on his shooting, and as a result of that, I thought he had a great year shooting the basketball for us this year.”
On what makes Tennessee guard Jahmai Mashack such an effective defender
“He’s athletic. He’s a guy that can go on basically anybody on the floor. He can go on a big, switch off and go on the point guard. Plays with a great motor. He’s a tough matchup. Offensively crashes the glass really hard. You have to match his energy when he comes in the game.”
On what makes Dalton Knecht so tough to deal with
“Well, he has NBA size, and he’s an NBA player, for one.
We’ve seen him grow. We played him when he was at Northern Colorado as a youngster. He’s really bulked up his body right now a little bit in terms of that. He plays a lot stronger and more aggressive.
He can always score the basketball. He’s a three-level scorer. He can score in transition. He can score getting downhill. He’s a terrific player with size. I think that’s the one thing. He can raise up and shoot over smaller guards.
He’s a tough guard. You’ve got to do a great job of really trying to really just contain him. You’re not going to stop a great player like him from scoring. He’s going to score, but it has to be on our terms and hopefully not let him have one of those crazy nights where he goes off for 30 points.”
On the familiarity with the two teams since they played each of the last two seasons
“It’s basically our third year we’re playing right now. You look into the fact we were in the SEC Challenge with the Big 12 challenge, and we played back-to-back years, home and away.
Again, we’re very familiar with how Tennessee plays in terms of they’re going to be very physical. It’s a very physical team. They’re a team that’s going to rely on a lot of paint touches. They shoot a lot of threes and make threes, but they’re heavy in the paint, playing inside-out. Really good defense. They’re going to sit down. They’re going to guard you really hard. They’re going to play heavy gap and going to try to limit you to one shot and out.
Again, I think it helps. It helps with them likewise in terms of we’re very familiar with knowing what each other wants to do and the strengths and the weaknesses of both.”
On how Jonas Aidoo has grown in recent years
“He’s made a huge jump. The thing that jumps out about him is his size. He’s a big kid who runs the floor, carves out space offensively with his hard duck-ins. He’s really tough on the glass. His shot-blocking ability changes games as well.
I thought last year was hard for him to get on the floor. They had some other guys that were pretty physical players that took up the majority of the time.
But going against those guys every day, you can see how he’s improved. Olivier (Nkamhoua) played really well against us last year, and Aidoo didn’t get a chance to get on the floor a whole lot.
But watching him from where he was last year to where he’s at right now, he’s really grown from an offensive standpoint and a defensive standpoint. He makes an impact on the game on both ends of the floor.”
