Tennessee basketball advanced to the Sweet 16 for the third straight season by knocking off UCLA 67-58 at Rupp Arena in Lexington.
Following the game, Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes discussed Chaz Lanier’s big performance, winning on the glass and much more. Here’s everything Barnes said.
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Opening statement
“Yeah, just the utmost respect for Mick Cronin and his UCLA team. We knew coming in how hard they play and they take on his personality. We kept talking about that all day yesterday and today. Exactly the way the game started out, that’s what we expected, both teams playing their hearts out, going after it.
Really proud of our guys, I thought we stayed in there, did a better job rebounding tonight than we have in the last couple of weeks. It’s something that we needed and proud of our guys for getting that done.”
On the performance from Chaz Lanier this season and against UCLA
“Probably the fact that he hasn’t changed any approach into the tournament. We tried not to do that. We understand what we’re in the tournament, we understand what this time of year is about. He hasn’t strayed away from his routine, what he needs to do.
Last three weeks he’s been very aggressive shooting the ball. But I think his focus is — he’s gotten so much better at paying attention to detail, but in terms of his personal psyche coming in, I thought it’s something he really embraced. Something he dreamed about being a part of.
When he came in, he’s a pretty cool, calm guy. I think he meant what he said about he gives all the glory to God. He’s grounded in a way that it’s not about him. He knows he’s part of a good team and he’s willing to do whatever he needs to do to help this team, but he’s just not selfish and in his own way he sets a great example.”
On going to the 1-2-2 press late in the first half
“Well, we have it and sometimes we use it, sometimes we don’t, depending on the game. What Zakai said was true, we wanted to throw it out there and see how teams handle it. If they don’t, we stay with it.
With them, they’re such a well-coached team and they really execute their sets. Our thought process was to get time off the clock so we didn’t have to go down and grind it for 30 seconds. Just try to let ’em get down and get started with 18, 19 seconds on the clock and we were able to turn ’em over a couple of times, which is something you expect but not really. Just like at the end of the game, we didn’t do a very good job of taking care of the ball at the end. Obviously they were playing behind and they could take a lot of chances.
But we got ’em on the court, hot zone where we felt like we could get some traps and came up with I think a couple of takeaways there.”
On battling inside and on the glass
“What I’m looking at here, if I’m reading it right, really proud of Igor, 7 rebounds. Felix had 7, Cade had 5. I can’t tell if that’s a 5 or 6. That’s what we ask those guys to do. That’s all we’ve talked about for two days is our post guys being effective at rebounding the ball for us, need to get extra possessions on the offensive end, gotta do it on the defensive end. That’s something we talked about and we haven’t done a great job the last couple weeks with it.
But we were better with that tonight. Other than turning the ball over late we played really well against, again, an outstanding defensive team. They’re very handsy, but that was the big thought coming in, we had to get production out of our front-line guys and with their rebounding, they got it done for us.”
On what it means to make the Sweet 16 for the third straight time
“Well, again, I thank God for Him bringing us all together, for one, because we have half a new team sorta, kinda this year, but it goes back to Zakai and Jahmai and Jordan has become a part of that core group, and they do come in. I’m glad a year ago that Cade got some time to play.
It goes back to leadership with our players. They deserve all the credit. They want to be coached, they know what we as a coaching staff expect from them every day and they know we’re going to try to be as consistent as we can doing our jobs and we want them to do that. It’s just a great testament to these guys that they really do like each other. They care, and they love our fan base.
Obviously it’s great being here and having a lot of — we’ve got the best fan base in the country and we believe that, everybody says it, we truly believe it.
These guys want to represent our university in the right way. But it goes back. Obviously I’ve got the best coaching staff in the country but it goes to the players. They’re the ones that grind it every day.
Some of them obviously want to play more but the fact that our motto is “it’s not about me,” I think these guys really do exemplify that extremely well.”
On what’s caused some of the rebounding issues for them this year
“Well, our opponents have a lot to do with it. Because we play against teams that emphasize it just as much as we do. But it really is a focus and sometimes — I mean, we’re obviously going to teach blocking out but honestly sometimes you just gotta go get it. I thought we did that tonight. We pursued the ball better. Obviously we need our guards to be in there getting after it, too, but our opponents have a lot to do with it.
We want to limit teams to one shot, but they won’t — they’re not going to let us do that. I just thought the focus was really there tonight, and you tell me going back, what did I learn? I thought we weren’t as focused as we needed to be in key positions there. But it’s not, I don’t think, because of a “want to”; it’s hard. It’s really hard to do when you’re playing at the level of competition that we’re playing against.”
On if they planned on going to the 1-2-2 press entering the game
“We’ve been using it more lately. We’ve had it. Jahmai said it, we’ve got a lot of things — we probably would have had some more things in, but I don’t think we are where we need to be with our ball screen defense, and everybody does it. I think you’ve got to be elite there, especially this time of year.
They made some nice adjustments tonight and was hurting us in the middle there. So we probably didn’t spend as much time working on that as you probably would like to, because we were trying to get some other things right, to an elite level, whether it’s being in gaps, whatever it may be.
It’s simple enough that, you know, you can use it. We’ve gotten some confidence in it, too, obviously, lately over the last couple of weeks.”
