Rick Barnes feels confident that Tennessee's offense can get even better

Tennessee limped into the SEC Tournament this year, having lost five of eight to close the regular season while having sophomore point guard Zakai Zeigler go down for the year with an ACL tear. Just a rotten few weeks for Volunteer fans. However, the boys in orange and white came out and took care of business in their SEC Tournament opener over an Ole Miss team that fired its coach a couple of weeks ago.

Rick Barnes’ club played their typically sound defense to hold the Rebels under 60 while the Vols scored 70 behind a terrific game from their backcourt starters Santiago Vescovi and Josiah-Jordan James, who scored 15 and 20 points apiece. A solid all-around performance for the Vols, but Coach Barnes is still looking for a better effort in Friday’s game against Missouri.

“I think we can still get better,” asserted Barnes after the Ole Miss win. “I mean, defensively I want to see us play defense, rebound. From our point, when we go back and grade this game out, I’m sure we’ve hit a lot of our team goals that we would like to have obviously.”

Yet Barnes always believes his team can play more perfect defense. And offensively, whew, did those turnover totals bother Rick Barnes. He was not happy to see Tennessee give Ole Miss so many easy buckets because of mishaps on offense.

“But offensively, I mean, you think about it. Again, 19 points off turnovers. That can’t happen. I mean, if we’re the defensive team that we want to be and should be, we’ve got to make people play against it. You can’t give ’em the ball and give ’em a chance to get out in transition. There’s no defense for that. The best defense we can have right there is take care of the ball and not allow people get out and score 19 points in transition.”

Barnes has a point. Virtually every website or analytical model that measures college hoops teams rates Tennessee as the top defense this season by far and away. The Vols are a torture chamber in half-court defense. But as Barnes said: to choke teams out in the half-court, you have to first prevent them from getting out in transition, which UT did a poor job of against the Rebels.

Still, Tennessee held Ole Miss to just 55 points and won by 15. Coach Barnes is nitpicking.