What Rick Barnes said after No. 1 Tennessee's 73-43 loss at No. 8 Florida

What head coach Rick Barnes said after No. 1 Tennessee’s 73-43 loss at No. 8 Florida Tuesday night at Exactech Arena in Gainesville:

Florida’s defense and what the Gators did to slow down Tennessee 

“Well, early we had a ton of open shots. I mean, first play the game, Chaz Lanier hadn’t been that open in a long time. And then they weren’t going in. Then I thought we lost our poise. I thought we had the wrong guys shooting the ball at the wrong time. And again, give Florida a ton of credit. They played well. They did the on the boards what we like to do to people, which I thought was the difference in the game. But I thought that we, again, got rushed, kind of became disconnected on the offensive end. There was guys open that took some shots and that could very well be by design. But I just didn’t think that, again, taking nothing away from them. They were terrific. I think it’s good for us, I really do. I think we’re going to learn a lot from this. And I told our guys first thing I said walking in (the locker room), I said this good for us. Because now we’re going to learn what we got to do to get better. And we got to get better play, obviously, out of our front line. They’ve got to do a better job. I thought they had to way in there on the front line, which I thought was really the difference in the game.”

Tennessee going 4-for-29 from the 3-point line 

“That happens sometimes. And again, that’s okay. But you can’t give up the offensive rebounds that we did. You can’t. You can’t give that up. But give them credit. I mean, that’s the mindset. That’s an effort. They made great effort. I thought their post guys played well. Did what they, I think, what they set out to do. I think their post guys understand their roles tremendously and how they need to play. And that’s a compliment to Todd (Golden) and his staff. And so again, they beat us any way you want to beat us. And like I said, we (have an) opportunity to learn and get better.” 

Florida being the more physical team, that not happening very much to Tennessee and if that was the most surprising part 

“Yeah. Just that. I would say that. Because, again, I thought we really lost our poise on both ends. We don’t get ridden up the lane like that, stuff that we talked about. And when those things start happening right there, again, you give your opponent credit for taking advantage of it. But you also look at your own players and like, ‘Why are we doing things that we know we’re not supposed to do?’ And I think it goes back sometimes to when guys struggle offensively, especially, when they’re missing shots that they think they should make, they let it carry to that end (on defense). They lose their concentration and good teams like Florida take advantage of it. But we were just, again, I have no idea some of the things I was looking out there watching it. I don’t think it was our guys not trying to play hard. I just didn’t think we played very smart.” 

Tennessee responding to this loss

“Well, you know, we have a routine that we do. We’ll go back and we’ll scrub this out and talk about the things that you want to do. This is a team that scores a lot of points. And as bad as we were on offense, I mean, I’m not sure what they were averaging. I know they’re way up there, the numbers. Defensively, take away the offensive rebound, we probably defended well enough to win a game and we could have been just somewhat ept on offense.

“But we didn’t. We weren’t. And, again, give them credit. I thought they played personnel the way we thought they would. And that’s part of the scouting reports. You come in, at this point in time in the season, things have started settling in and you kind of have a feel for what players are about and you can look at analytics and do this and do that. So there was no surprises there. It’s just that when we got down— shot selection, allowed them to get out and transition offensive rebounds, those type things. And we got behind. And then I just, again, we weren’t following what we needed to do coming out of timeouts. And it’s good for all of us. We talk about it. We never, again, I’m not even sure at any point in time when we started a season we thought we’d be (where we are) right now. I’m proud of this team. I thank the Good Lord that they’re our guys. And again, I love our guys, and am blessed to have this opportunity to coach them and we’ll learn from this.

“We’ve been here before, believe me, been beat worse than this. And we’ll will learn from it. Or else, like you said, this league’s, it’s not going to — nobody in the league are feeling sorry for us tonight. Nobody around the country. And so it’s on us to correct what we’ve got to do to get better. And again, give them credit. I’m sure they’re looking at it and feel like they probably had their game plan down to the tee how they wanted to do it. We can’t say that on our part.”

Florida having a bunch of offensive options

“Again, I think they’ve got a really nice team. They’re a, good basketball team. They are, I think that they’ve got a lot of options. I like their balance. Honestly we’re probably more concerned with the frontline coming in because we knew they’re physical, we think those guys really understand their roles, what they have to do to not only get those guys open you’re talking about. But then playing off of them and when the opportunity’s there, they take advantage of it. And our biggest thing, tonight, first thing on the board was it’s always transition defense, get back and get our defense set. Second thing is always rebounding the ball and they had their way and so we didn’t do the job there. And you can talk about their options, this, that or whatever. You get beat that badly on the boards, it’s tough to win.”

Kentucky losing at Georgia while Tennessee lost at Florida, if this is how the SEC is going to be this season

“I don’t know. I mean, we know the league’s good. It’s historic what happened with our league in the non-league. And I think our teams have gotten better throughout. I mean, I think there’s outstanding coaches and players in the league. I don’t think there’s any gimmes, you know, I don’t think there’s any gimmes at home. I don’t think there’s any gimmes on the road. I just think that this league, we built it to that. Something we should all be proud of. But it’s a lot of basketball left to play. And the key is honestly, and I’ve said it, we’re still in the, what, first week or so of January, if we don’t get better, we’re not gonna be any better. We gotta get better. We obviously do what we do to prepare for teams, but it’s about us, looking at ourselves and being honest, and being real and say, ‘okay, we came up short, got beat by an outstanding team and pretty much any way you (can) get beat, and it’ll be good for us if we learn from it.”

His message to his Tennessee team after it went down 12-0 to start the game

“Just poise. Yeah, we’ve missed some open shots. And we had some open — I mean open shots, and we missed them. And then I didn’t think we stayed poised. I thought we lost it if we did anything because again, you look at numbers, stats, I’m sure that they feel good about some of the threes that we took early. And again, I don’t mind those shots, but when they’re not going in, you can’t have everybody shooting threes. And like I said, some of that’s by design, you know, other teams like leaving it open, saying go ahead have all you want. And I thought they were physical, which I think our league’s a physical league, you know, really trying to run guys off screens, all that, hitting the ball screen hard, all that kind of things. Again, I think you gotta give them a ton of credit. I really do. But I am disappointed in the way that I felt we weren’t poised the way we need to be when we got down. And we’ve been down before, obviously not that badly, but on the road especially. And we just didn’t handle it very well.”