'Just keep shooting, man': How Justin Gainey helped Jordan Gainey bust out of his slump
Justin Gainey approached it just like any other slump any other player has been through during his coaching career. Keep putting the work in. Keep shooting. Keep believing in your shot.
“Just stay confident,” Gainey, Tennessee basketball’s associate head coach, said last week, “stay upbeat, next one’s going in.”
It just happened that the player in this instance was his son, Tennessee junior transfer shooting guard Jordan Gainey.
During a five-game stretch over two weeks, Gainey didn’t score more than four points in a game and didn’t hit more than one shot from the field. Three times he failed to score completely while going 0-for-everything.
Against Norfolk State, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Georgia and Florida, Gainey totaled just seven points and went just 2-for-18 from the floor. He was 1-for-14 from the 3-point line.
His dad never changed his message, though.
“Coach and dad is kind of the same,” Justin Gainey, “in the sense of, ‘Hey, get in the gym, just keep shooting, man. Stay confident.’ It’s like I would tell anybody, any of our players when they go through maybe some shooting lulls or maybe not played the best game.
“I’m always more of an upbeat, confident guy versus trying to crush you. That’s just kind of my nature.”
Staying upbeat paid off on Saturday against Alabama. Gainey came off the bench to score 15 points, going 4-for-7 from the field, 3-for-5 from the 3-point line and 4-for-4 from the foul line while adding five rebounds and three steals.
“Jordan Gainey was a huge factor in the game, a huge factor,” Rick Barnes said after Tennessee’s 91-71 win. “We knew it was just a matter of time. He … took care of the ball. And defensively, he’s working at it really hard. But that’s something that we’ve watched him practice.
“And I do think he went through a couple games there where obviously he was pressing and we kept on him to shoot it and because we watched him in practice every day.”
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The version of Gainey that showed up against Alabama was the same one — the productive sixth man who can score in bunches — that showed up the first seven games of the season, when he scored in double figures six times and averaged 11.6 points per game.
“It felt good to see one finally go through,” Jordan Gainey said Saturday night. “But even though I was going through a minor slump, I’d say, is just being able to just rely on my practice and just go back on the things that I’ve been doing.
“Just relying on my work, really just being able to work out, do what I do and just being able to see it go through felt good.”
Gainey’s 15 points and three 3-pointers were his most since November 21 against Purdue. His four made shots were his most since Tarleton State on December 21.
It’s the kind of numbers he knows he can put up. And the numbers the Vols need him to keep putting up.
“He puts in the work,” Justin Gainey said, “and he’s a confident guy, confident shooter, so I know his confidence won’t ever get deflated. It’s easier for me because I’ve been dad and I’ve been coach his entire life. Nothing really changes from that standpoint.”
