Rick Barnes is now 6-4 vs. John Calipari

Not many coaches have John Calipari’s number, but Rick Barnes sure has lately. With Tennessee’s win today, Barnes’ record vs. Calipari improved to 6-4. The two are good friends, and after each loss, Cal jokes that he should never have recommended Barnes take the job in Knoxville back in 2015. Today was no exception.

“Six games in two years. They’re all wars. I don’t know why I recommended that Rick take this job. If I’d have known he was doing this to us, I would have said, Stay at Texas, don’t even come up here.”

Like a good friend, Barnes had plenty of compliments for Calipari and Kentucky following the game.

“Well, they’re so well-coached,” Barnes said. “They’re not going to beat themselves. They really don’t. We knew they were going to go at us inside. We knew that obviously.”

As Barnes noted, foul trouble plagued the Cats, with PJ Washington on the bench for most of the first half.

“You look at P.J., picked up two fouls, played 20 minutes. When he came back, they were going at us inside. They were really doing that. That’s when we said we’re going to turn around. What we felt we had to do was get their big guys away from the basket early. At the end we said we’re going to go inside because that’s what we do, our makeup, where we put it on the block, do that. Some of it, they were in foul trouble. You know they’re not going to be quite as aggressive in that situation.”

Here’s a silver lining: Admiral Schofield and Kyle Alexander graduate this year, so the Vols won’t be quite as strong next season.

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