Rick Barnes calls on Tennessee to take the right shot on offense

Tennessee‘s 46-43 win over Auburn was highlighted by a poor night of offense by both squads, as the Volunteers and Tigers scored season-lows in points. After the game, Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes explained that their team’s issue was not in creating open shots, it was just taking them.

“We had some wide-open shots, and I actually told Santi (Santiago Vescovi) one time, we came out and executed a play as well as we can execute it. And he had as wide open a look as he’s had in a month, and he didn’t shoot it and threw it inside and O (Olivier Nkamhoua) turned it over. I mean Santi’s man was down there,” Barnes said. “That’s what we’ve got to get out of, we’ve got to continue to take our shots whether they’re going in or not.”

The Volunteers shot just 27% from the field and 9.5% from the three-point line, and even struggled from the free throw line against the Tigers shooting 58.8% on their free throws.

“Trust our court balance, trust the fact that we’ve got guys that we’re going to make the effort to go try to rebound it, but we’ve got to take open shots,” Barnes said. “You go back and when you break down, and we’re in that area where I think we’re going to learn from it and keep getting better.”

Barnes pulled back the curtain on Tennessee’s offensive scheme, detailing the consequences that come when his team doesn’t at least attempt to take their open shots.

“Oftentimes we throw the ball in the post, the teams, the people guarding us on the perimeter, don’t even think about coming down to choke it out, just letting those guys play down there. And we do need our post guys to deliver some of those baskets to make teams adjust to it. And then what happens if players sense it, coaches sense it when guys are open not shooting the ball, then the defense says okay now we’re going to really back up and force you into doing that,” Barnes explained. “So there’s a lot of things going on within a game that players have to work through, coaches have to work through, but again it’s February.”

At the end of the day, Barnes understands that his team’s most recent shooting performance is an outlier, and not as surprising with the conclusion of the regular season looming.

“You look around the country there’s a lot of teams that struggle this time of year, especially in conference play because you know each other so well and baskets are hard to come by,” Barnes said. “But I’m sure Bruce will look at his tape and think we got the shot we wanted, we didn’t make it, we’ll certainly do the same thing. It’s a players game, always has been always will be and we just gotta continue to try to improve on the things we need to improve on.”