What Rick Barnes said Friday about Bruce Pearl, No. 6 Tennessee at No. 1 Auburn

What head coach Rick Barnes said about No. 6 Tennessee’s game at No. 1 Auburn Saturday night (8:30 p.m. Eastern Time, ESPN) at Neville Arena in Auburn:

What stands out when he thinks about Tennessee facing Bruce Pearl and Auburn 

“A great coach. He been around the game a long time. Understands how he wants his teams to play, recruits to that type system. And just extremely sound. You look at his record, everywhere he has been, he has been successful. And just the utmost respect for Bruce and the fact that he, again, I think the key to coaching is knowing how you want to play and recruit guys and get them to play that way. And he does that as well as anyone.”

Auburn not taking a step back the last two games without Johni Broome (ankle)

“Well, I think it speaks to who they are as a team. And the fact that when you’re the No. 1-ranked team, and they’ve been there all year long, and you look at their only loss is at Duke early in the year. And so you’re not going to get to be a No. 1, No. 2, No. 5, any of those teams ranked by one guy alone. You can certainly have a guy that can anchor you down, but you’ve got to be able to withstand some of these type situations through injuries. 

“And (Pearl) started the season, I would think that if you ask him, he maybe thinking this might have been one of the deepest teams he’s ever had. And when you start, early in the year, they play 10 guys. You’re prepared for something when you lose someone like Johni.”

The difficulty in preparing for an Auburn team that has multiple players that can be productive

“Well, it’s difficult. And we go into every game and you’ll always put up key players that the numbers tell you that you think they play through, but you talk about every player. And we would say that any player in this conference at this level has the ability to do that at any point in time. So we’re not going to overlook anybody on that roster, because we’ve seen them. And it’s not just Auburn, it’s just everybody we play. We’re not going to overlook anybody because we know that if they’re at this level, they’re capable of having a big night.”

Tennessee needing to have better communication on the road after struggling with it in the loss at Vanderbilt

“I think focus. That’s what we showed our last game here (against Mississippi State). It was really neat watching the focus from the very beginning of the game. You could see the communication between the players. You could see it. And now you’ve got to be able to really, truly take it on the road. But you could just tell from the beginning, just little subtle detailed things. Before the play was happening, you saw guys pointing out, doing this, doing that. You saw that happening and when players start really communicating like that on the court, that’s when you know they’re really locked in and focused.”

Felix Okpara’s play in recent games 

“Well, again, I think it takes time. I think anytime you go from one system to another — he certainly has played against high-level competition since he’s been in college — but still getting comfortable with what he’s doing, seeing some of it develop for him, see it happening. And Felix works hard. I’ve said many times you don’t really know what is in a person until you really get to spend time with him day in and day out. And we knew what we could see, watching Felix when he was in high school then in college. But he’s so much more. And that’s why we said we’re not going to put him in a box. We want to try to get him to keep going, because we think there’s more there, but his mindset when he’s playing like he is right now, he gives us something that we haven’t had in a while.”

How tough it is to defend an Auburn team with four players shooting 39% or better from the 3-point line

“Like you would imagine. They’re every spot you got to be. You got to be disciplined, you have to really stick together. And like we’ve said before, we’re not asking one person to guard one guy. We believe in our team defense. But that’s why Auburn’s so good. They shoot the ball as well as anybody in the country. And it takes a lot of focus, takes a lot of discipline and to make sure you stay locked in throughout the possession.” 

The key for Tennessee post players in defending Auburn’s Dylan Cardwell

“Same thing. I mean they’re big, they’re strong. And it’s always about space. You know, trying to obviously you don’t want them to be able to just do what they want to do. Believe me, they’re going to work as hard as they can to keep us from doing what we want to do and we have to do the same. And whether it’s as a team, but also in all those individual matchups like that, knowing that what they’re trying to do, you’re trying to take it away from them.”

If it’s more difficult to prepare for Auburn not knowing if Johni Broome will try to play or will be out

“Not really. We prepare the same. We’ll know. In our league now, I think is it Friday night they send (an injury report). But we’ll prepare, because it’s no different going into a game when you might prepare for somebody to get in foul trouble, they’re gone, you got to be ready for who comes in behind them. And so you go about it the same way.” 

If Chaz Lanier did a better job working to get open and get shots against Mississippi State

“He did. I thought he did. And again, go back to that game talking about the details earlier in the communication, I thought our post guys were really looking to screen in a really good way. But they can’t screen if there’s not some separation from (Lanier’s) man, where they can get their bodies on them. And you get banged up a little bit like that, obviously, but he’s got to get the separation to allow us to screen for him.”

What he has seen from Auburn freshman Tahaad Pettiford

“High level, high level. Guy that can score the ball. Guy that, if you give him much room, he gets going. And he’s just a high level, highly talented player.”

The next step for Tennessee sophomore forward Cade Phillips in his development

“It’s always consistency. And continuing to understand what he has to do night in and night out right now. And then as time goes on, Cade’s role is going to change tremendously over the next year or so because of he’s going to work. But you know, he’s a (sophomore) getting out there. But right now it’d be just consistency with what we need him to do defensively and what we need from him on the offensive end.”

What the role will be for Cade Phillips in the future  

“I can’t tell you that because I mean he’s a (sophomore), but based on his work ethic, again, I wouldn’t put him in a box. I think he’s capable of doing probably a lot more than we all might think right now. Because I think anytime you’ve got a competitive spirit like he does, and he’s already improved a lot. I’ve said many times what he and Felix did to help each other throughout the summer, the fall was maybe the hardest thing that anybody on our team has gone through because they had no substitutions and they went at each other every day. And so I’m excited about Cade’s future.”

If the SEC schedule will help prepare teams for March, or if teams in the league will just beat each other up

“That’s interesting. I’ve been asked that question lot for the last couple days. I don’t know if there is an answer. I don’t watch the NFL much, but I do like hearing guys talk during the playoffs. And when I hear these talking heads talk about the teams they think will be in the Super Bowl and they’re not there right now, I think it goes to show you that people that — and those guys really study the game like you would expect to be commentators like that — you don’t know. You don’t know until it really happens. 

“I could look at the College (Football) Playoff. I thought the team that got the bad end of the deal was Oregon. You think about a No. 8-No. 9 game between Tennessee and the eventual national (champion). It doesn’t make sense. But I don’t know what anybody thought coming through there so we could talk about it. 

“I could be philosophical and say, well I can tell you that iron sharpens iron it’s going to help us at the end. When you get to the end of the year, it does become a lot based on matchups, how it plays out and where it is. But I don’t know, I mean, I could argue it probably both ways, but I’m just worried about this week.”

What Igor Milicic Jr. needs to do to be more consistent and efficient on offense

“Just that, because we need him to do it. We need that from him and he wants to do it. I mean, Igor loves the game. Got the utmost respect for what he’s — again, he’s no different than anybody coming in for his first year. He’s been in two programs where it was more, I guess, structured a little bit. The way we play is a lot of read and react. So he’s learning to do all that, but he’s impacted a lot of games with his rebounding already. We just need him to — and we know that he can shoot the ball. There’s no question in our mind with that. But we’re trying to get him more involved to do a lot more for us on the offensive end.” 

If he has any fatherly advice for Justin Caldwell after his wife, Lady Vols coach Kim Caldwell, gave birth to their first child earlier this week

“I’ve been doing that for about three months. I’m really excited for both of ’em. He was excited. He came back yesterday and he tried to tell me, you guys didn’t tell me all of it and I said, ‘We did. You just didn’t listen.’ I really am excited for both of them. And so every day now I’m gonna get some kind of details that I can eventually use against Coach Caldwell. Kim.”

How much he changed as a coach when he became a parent

“Unbelievable. It’s one of the greatest gifts ever when God blesses you with a child. And now being a grandfather, I can tell you being a grandparent is not overrated. It’s unbelievable. But when God blesses someone with a child, and I mean, he (Justin Caldwell) came in last night, he had a beam on his face. He really did. And it was neat ’cause I can imagine, you know, my daughter was born on the day of my very first conference game as a head coach. And I can remember going to the game, but so excited to get back. And I can remember sitting there holding her for two and a half hours from midnight till two in the morning until she had to go back to her mom to feed. And I can just remember the glow on her face and I didn’t wanna let her go. And I’m sure he feels like that right now too. And the same was true of my son, obviously. I asked Kim one day, I said, ‘who would plan on having a baby in the middle of January,’ knowing that my daughter was born on the ninth of January. But I didn’t have to deliver it, thank goodness.”

The biggest piece of advice he would give the Caldwells about balancing their life and coaching

“This is what we do. It can’t be who you are. I’d say that to any coach. If your job is your identity, you’re gonna really struggle. Because there’s so much more, and I did it. I put it first and it was some of the worst times of my life that I wish I could go back and be 36-years-old again. And I’d do so many things differently because I lost my way, but thank God that he didn’t leave me. And that’s my foundation now, my relationship with Jesus Christ. But the fact is, if you make this bigger than it is, it’ll eat you alive.”