Rick Barnes previews No. 6 Tennessee's game at No. 9 Arizona

Everything Rick Barnes said before Thursday’s practice at Pratt Pavilion, as No. 6 Tennessee (9-1) prepares to face No. 9 Arizona (9-1) on Saturday (10:30 p.m. Eastern Time; TV: ESPN2) at McKale Memorial Center in Tucson, Ariz., the first true road game of the season for the Vols:

Contrasting styles with Tennessee’s No. 1 defense against Arizona’s No. 1 offense 

“I think it’s going to be hard, because they really do a great job of putting the ball inside. There is no doubt when you watch them play, they’re a heavy inside-out team. Certainly have shooters that surround that. But they do as good of a job as anybody. From the time they get the ball, they’re looking at that basket. They’ve got post guys that are running to get it and get it early. If not they get ball-screen actions. And they move you to get to it. They do a great job of getting to the rim, throwing it up and going and getting it. But Tommy (Lloyd) has done a terrific job in a short time there. They play hard. Always competitive. And he’s got them doing exactly what he wants them to do.”

Arizona being a really good passing team

“They are. They’re sound fundamentally. You look at them, they do a lot of great things. But to be a high-scoring team, you can’t turn it over very much. The way they attack, they run. I go back, I look back on last year’s game, we were up early. They missed some shots and we made some good shots. But the second half, they just came rolling back and did it with speed. Just really coming at us hard. This is a great arena, a great atmosphere. It’s been a long time since I’ve been there, but I have a lot of respect for their fanbase and certainly the job he’s done since he’s been there.”

Rick Barnes updates the availability of Jonas Aidoo, Santiago Vescovi, Josiah-Jordan James

Tommy Lloyd saying facing Tennessee and this defense is like being in a fist fight

“I do think our guys play hard. I think they know they have to. I think they understand that we’ve talked about it a lot, what we want to do. The identity, being a defensive team. Hopefully we can get our offense going the way we’re capable of doing it. But we’ve got a group of guys that have bought into each other and trying to be the best defensive team, best rebounding team we can be. If you do that, we truly believe it gives us a chance to be in most games, win most games. There are nights where you run up against people that you can guard, but they still make some shots. Arizona is certainly capable of doing that.”

The availability of Jonas Aidoo, Santiago Vescovi and Josiah-Jordan James

“I think Santi and Jonas are back for certain. I haven’t gotten a report today on Josiah yet.”

If Tobe Awaka has earned consistent playing time in the eyes of Tennessee coaches

“Yeah, I think he has put himself in that position that we can count on him and put him out there early but what I would say that about him and any guy on our team, if you get away from what we need you to do that doesn’t last very long. He’s the one guy that will prepare and he had great preparation (before Maryland) because we knew we were going to have to play him early. To be honest with you, the coaching staff is excited about it. We watch him in practice and he wants to be good. He really does. He puts a lot of time into it but as you know this is going to be a big game for our front line. They are big, they run, they’re skilled, their post guys look out for each other so we’re going to have to be ready with our front line.”

If consistency is the most important thing for Tobe Awaka

“Yeah and I think he’ll continue to learn how to score the ball. That’s just coming with the fact that night in and night out he’s playing with bigger, stronger players than I’m sure he has— I can’t imagine him being on the court too many times in high school where he wasn’t the biggest guy or even probably in AAU. Even the other day he did a great job of going against guys that are bigger and just like him, getting rebounds. Chasing them down but it’s going to be fun watching him develop because I do think he’s going to develop into a good offensive player.”

How Jahmai Mashack’s game has grown since last season

“It has. As he continues to grow what he can’t do is revert back to the bad habits cause I think he’s a really good player. I think he’s just getting started with how good he can be and he can’t get away from the things he does well and he’s gotten himself, last game he got himself in trouble offensively taking some shots that were ill advised. We need him to step up and make free throws. He’s a good shooter. He can shoot the ball. He goes so hard and people wonder why it’s hard to make free throws. When you go as hard as he goes — and I’d say that for a couple guys on our team — and all at once you go from going all out physically and all at once you’re standing on the line. He’s got to learn to control his breathing, slow down. I told him yesterday when we were in here working, it’s like golf. You see golfers drive off with their driver, they don’t putt with a driver. I said you’re shooting with a driver all of the time. I said we have to get you under control with that and he worked on that yesterday. Like I said, he’s a hard worker. He wants to be good and he’s just getting started to be the kind of player he wants to be.”

On if this is one of the more physical Tennessee teams he’s had as a coach:

“Probably with depth, yeah. If we can get everybody — you know, certainly Tobe brings us a level of physicality that we haven’t had since probably Grant left in the terms of how he’s built and the way he throws things around. But with Olivier and Uros being older seniors, they’re both certainly physical. Jonas, his length bothers people in a different way where those guys can do it with more physicality. Jonas’ length is an issue for teams. Those four guys give us the kind of frontline that we need.

“But on the outside, Zakai, Santi, Jahmai — Julian is learning how to do it. Tyreke is getting there and certainly when Josiah is there, all those guys play physical. We work hard at trying to do it without fouling, keep our hands back and try to do it with our chest and feet. But we can get better and I think our guys understand that.”

Up Next: No. 6 Tennessee at No. 9 Arizona, Saturday, 10:30 p.m. ET, ESPN2

What it says about his team that the defense has been outstanding despite missing players in different games

“It says a lot about them, but I think it also says a lot about our coaching staff because those guys, they do a terrific job of everyday coming in focused and understanding, we kept talking about it all offseason, we’ve got to be better in all facets, but we knew we had to be better defensively. Mainly that being, we have to continue to get to our gaps early, rebound the ball, contest shots, all that. We’ve got to stop fouling three-point shooters. That’s for certain. The fact is we want to challenge every shot, but we were getting too close on our run-offs on our personnel players. But again, I do think these guys have taken pride in being a good defensive team.”

Why the three-point defense has been so good

“Again, I think our coaches have done a good job with scouting in terms of how we play. We go into every game personnel based first, in terms of knowing what we think each guy wants to do and get done. We try to focus on that and then obviously we know, every team we play they’ve got good schemes. They’ve got good offense that they’re running, but we’re trying to understand that and this team has done a good job for the most part.”

If the noise in the second half on Sunday against Maryland prepared Tennessee for its first true road test against Arizona

“I think so. It was really interesting playing there because when their crowd came to life, it sounded like they had a full house. When we were up, it sounded like we had it. Somewhere between the fans and the acoustics were pretty good. When they started coming back and they were able to get into their press — you know it’s hard to press unless you’re making shots to get your press set, but some teams press make or miss. They were more of a team that relies on making shots to get into their press. When they started getting downhill and scoring, we were catching the ball too deep and the crowd got into it. I thought our guys handled it. I don’t think that rattled our guys at all, I just think the fact that we at the end when we had to make some big shots, we had three different guys do it. At the end when we needed to come up with some stops and rebounds, we were able to do it.”