Everything Rick Barnes said following Tennessee’s win over St. Joe’s

“One, let me say this, I think Billy Lange and Saint Joe’s have done a great job with their season. They have two key players, maybe three, that they haven’t been able to get. I mean key guys. They played a terrific game at Villanova the other night and they fought hard. I’m sure it was an emotional, Big Five type game there. Then a quick turnaround to come here. There’s no doubt that Billy is continuing to coach his culture, get it in place. We knew, one, they would shoot a lot of threes. We didn’t want to give them a chance to shoot 30, 35 of them. With that said, we also knew they would drive the ball. That’s what happens when we play against teams that shoot the three. 

“They drove the ball hard, really hard. Put it into the paint. They out-scored us actually in the paint, where we drive the ball but we also look to post the ball hard. They run a unique offense, something we haven’t really seen a lot of, where it’s a lot of five out, doing some good things. They hit it quick. I think they’re going to be a really good team this year. Again, like I said, they’ve been hit with the COVID, to stop as much as we were. Once he gets everybody back, his guys play hard, they know what they’re looking for. But they drove it hard. We try to drive it hard. We tried to post it hard. You had two teams that were playing really physical.”

On Tennessee’s offensive execution against St. Joe’s:

“We do have a group of guys that really understand what we’re trying to do really pretty much every time they’re out there. It’s trying to get the young guys, again, to execute, play through it when it’s not there. How quick can we get reorganized and get what we need to get done, done? Think about it, with two games in a row over 100 points and we knew what it would be. We felt it would be a very high-possession game, which it was, because they attack. They play. We knew it would be a high-possession game. Could we take care of the ball the way we need to in a high-possession game? I thought for the most part we did do that. I thought Santiago was really good. He got back to where he was looking to shoot the ball. When people know he’s willing to shoot those deep bombs, the better he is as a player. And he had turned down a lot of shots prior to this game. We told you’ve got to take these. You’ve got to take them. He’s going to make a nice percentage of them. Josiah tonight I thought was going to be a great learning experience for him. He got in foul trouble. I don’t think he was as locked in as he needs to be when he came back into the game. There are a lot of little things that went on. And I mentioned what I thought Uros (Plavsic) and Olivier (Nkmahoua) did, I thought it was really critical for us as a team because we’re going to need those guys at some point in time. E.J. Anosike showed what he can do. I thought John (Fulkerson) forced some shots early and I told him at halftime we’ve got too many weapons around him, that he doesn’t ever need to take a bad shot. But overall it was a really good offensive performance. Another night where I think we had three guys that had five assists. What was it, 23 assists on 10 turnovers against a team, at that pace, was overall a pretty nice job.”

On Tennessee jumping out to a 20-4 lead:

“We were pleased. There is no doubt we were pleased with that because we really had a lot of respect for this team coming in. We were able to show them some really good footage of them playing really well. They had played arguably the toughest schedule of any team that we have played this year. They had played Auburn, Villanova, Kansas. They fought in every one of those games. At home, the night before last, they were in the game. I think they led in the second half at one point. But they were down 10 with 10 to go then Villanova was able to stretch it out. They do some good things — some really good things — and hard things to defend. We did more switching tonight than we probably have many ever. They can really get you twisted up. The start was important, but I told the team the way we finished it with that group out there — because those minutes are valuable. Every possession matters. For those guys to go in and really try to execute the way they did — and they had some terrific execution plays at the end and we were able to score out of it.”

On preparing for SEC play:

“All we can do is do what we do right now and try to continue to get better and keep trying to put our team together with the rhythm that we want to play with. How do you do it? You have to keep getting better every day. You have to understand that obviously you get into conference play and everything gets turned up a level. Every possession becomes even more valuable. At this point in time, all we can do is all we can do with the games we have got right now. We have to go make it — the exciting thing is I think we can get a lot better. I think our team understands that. We have to get better and we are going to have to be better consistently overall going into SEC play.”

On the decision to leave Jaden Springer in the game with three fouls in the second half:

“We left him in because one we think he needs to learn to play with three fouls. We also felt like he is going to have to learn. He has always been able to dominate people when he is on defense. Now, he is playing against a player that has got the ability to shoot a three and go by you. He asked a couple times why he fouls. He will find out that it is different than high school in terms of what is deemed legal guarding position opposed to being on someone’s hip. We want him to continue to learn to do that. I really wanted him to stay in the game at the end and really run the point and really try to get those other guys involved. He fouled out. But I had told him prior to that and he said what am I supposed to do? I said not look to shoot, but get those guys organized so you know you can give them a chance to get their confidence going.”