Rick Barnes speaks about Dalton Knecht’s road success, name-drops Kevin Durant

In four road game appearances this season, Dalton Knecht is averaging 31.3 points per game on a 61 percent clip while also shooting 48 percent from deep.

While the Tennessee guard has been, on paper, the best player in the country on the road — Vols head coach Rick Barnes says this isn’t the first time one of his players has done something like this.

“Well, I did have Kevin Durant,” Barnes said with a grin after Knecht scored 36 points to beat Georgia 85-79. “So, I saw it a bunch.”

In classic KD fashion, Knecht put his team on his back and scored 13 points in the final eight minutes of the game to complete the comeback from a 14-point deficit against the Bulldogs in the second half.

Other than their scoring prowess, however, how does Barnes justify comparing his greatest player of all time to Knecht, who is a relative unknown with a few strong games under his belt this season?

“[It’s their] mindset,” Barnes said, comparing Knecht to KD. “It’s a mindset where, you know, short memory. Not afraid of the moment, willing to go make the big play, and if they don’t — they’ve got a great ability to bounce back. … Dalton, you guys have seen him know that when he gets that look in his eye, he can go do this. And he did. He did it.”

Earlier this week, Knecht scored 28 points against Mississippi State on the road before following it up with his 36-point performance against the Bulldogs. It is the first time any Tennessee player has scored 26 or more points in consecutive games since Chris Lofton did so in 2006.

Even more impressive — Knecht scored 26 of his 28 points against MSU in the second half. He followed that up by being on the mark for 40 minutes during Saturday’s win.

For the Durant comparison — at least with the current four-game sample size — Knecht has the former NBA MVP beat. Durant averaged 28.7 points per game in true road games during his lone season at Texas under Barnes. Durant scored more than 26 points on nine separate occasions for the Longhorns, and his best performance was capped at 37 points — which he did so three times.

Tennessee’s next road game won’t come until Jan. 27 when they travel to in-state rival Vanderbilt. Whether Knecht can maintain his 30-plus point scoring average against the ailing Commodores remains to be seen, but it will certainly be the main storyline heading into that matchup.