Rick Barnes not focusing on Kentucky's struggles before matchup

Tennessee and Kentucky will meet on Saturday in a game that the Wildcats desperately need to win as they continued to struggle on Tuesday with a loss to South Carolina. That loss dropped Kentucky to just 1-3 in SEC play. However, Tennessee coach Rick Barnes doesn’t want to worry about Kentucky’s struggles ahead of their game.

Barnes explained that he has tons of respect for Kentucky, head coach John Calipari, and the type of threat that the Wildcats represent.

“Well, what I know is the respect that I have for John Calipari and his program and what he’s meant, not only to the University of Kentucky, but to college basketball in general, and when you think of his teams, all I know is they always get better,” Rick Barnes said. “Always.”

“I don’t care what’s happened up to this point, with either the University of Kentucky or the University of Tennessee, you can throw all that out. It’s going to be a game where both teams are going to play hard, going to try and get better, and so we’re going to have to be ready to play. You go back and look, like a lot of teams in college basketball, they’ve had injuries they’re dealing with. I’m not sure he’s had his whole team together all year.”

Tennessee is coming into the game against Kentucky on a five-game winning streak that includes beating South Carolina by 43 points. That’s the same team that Kentucky just lost to. In fact, the Volunteers only have two losses this season, to Arizona and Colorado.

“One thing I do know is that his teams always get better and they play their best basketball late in the year and hope that people can say the same thing about us. That we’re going to get better and we’re still going to play our best basketball later on.”

ESPN analyst says Texas should call Rick Barnes

Rick Barnes has been the head coach at Tennessee since 2015. Before that, he had stops with George Mason, Providence, Clemson, and Texas. Now, ESPN analyst Jimmy Dykes thinks that the Longhorns should give him a call and see if he’d be interested in coming back.

After Texas fired head coach Chris Beard amid legal trouble, there have been several big names thrown around for the job and Barnes obviously knows the program well. So, it makes some sense why Texas might be interested.

“If I’m Texas, my first phone call is to Rick Barnes to apologize and asking him if he’ll come back, which he’s not going to do,” Dykes said. “That’s the first phone call.”