What Rick Barnes said after No. 5 Tennessee's 75-64 loss at No. 15 Kentucky

What head coach Rick Barnes said after No. 5 Tennessee’s 75-64 loss at No. 15 Kentucky Tuesday night at Rupp Arena in Lexington:

Kentucky getting Lamont Butler back for the second game against Tennessee 

“Well, he’s really good defensively, but also he gives them their best downhill driver, and a guy that (is) experienced, been around. I love the way he plays, I really do. And I hate that he got hurt again, because those shoulders, they’re hard to deal with this time of year, especially when you’re at the point where you’re getting hit a lot. I just hate that for him and for them. But he’s a difference maker because, one, he’s tough, hard-nosed, can affect the game on both ends.”

What went wrong for Tennessee in the final four minutes 

“You know what, way, way, way too many defensive breakdowns on our part. Give Kentucky credit, they did it, but we had way too many defensive breakdowns on things that you can’t do there at the end of the game. And then I thought offensively we had a few guys that got too emotional, didn’t make really good decisions on the offensive end. But I don’t want to say anything to take away from Kentucky. Mark’s done a great job of this group. We were right where we needed to be and didn’t make enough winning plays on either end of the court.”

What Tennessee needs to do different guarding the 3-point line against teams like Kentucky 

“Well, they’re going to shoot enough threes. And, again, the threes didn’t beat us. It’s the other penetration. You let their bench come in and impact the game in a big way. That can’t happen. But it did. And we’ve talked enough about it. They got guys that can shoot the ball. I mean, I asked the question, the guys we expect to shoot it, why aren’t we making ours? Because we have some great looks at it. So you give them credit for making the shots. But with all those threes going in, they’re going to score. That’s what they do. I mean, you expect them to shoot it. But you can’t give them the other things that we gave up tonight, along with that.”

Tennessee handling the ups and downs in SEC play

“Well, it is what it is. And how you handle it is whether or not you judge yourself or whether you felt you played well. And I thought it was a kind of game, them playing well, doing what they’re doing, we were up I think 58-55, I think somewhere there. And then we didn’t finish the game well. And give them credit for that. But I don’t know how everybody else thinks, I mean, we go on a court, we expect to win. But we know, like you said, it’s the best league in the country, maybe ever. I mean, it’s ridiculous, to be honest with you. But the good thing about it, everything is a Quad 1 game. And it helps you, obviously, if you win. And if you don’t, it probably doesn’t hurt you as badly as you can in some leagues when you lose games. But it’s an incredible league and I’m proud of it. Ten years ago it was awful. And where we are today is amazing and I think it’s a compliment to a lot of different people to get it to this point. And I don’t see it going backwards too much either.”

If Tennessee’s defensive struggle is something Kentucky does or if it’s just Kentucky hitting shots

“Again, I thought they played well tonight. And I was really disappointed at home because we didn’t play with the effort it takes to win. Tonight I thought we played with the effort, but we didn’t play very smart. We made some of the same mistakes in terms of personnel, but again, give them credit. We know they’re going to shoot it and you hope that like anybody, that when you come in, when you get some looks at it, you can make some of them to negate some of that. 

We didn’t tonight with the fact that we only made three tonight and they made 12. We were still right there. And really it was probably because of our defense. But the fact is they’re capable of doing this. And we haven’t put together, all year long, enough games where we guarded well enough and shot the ball well enough. And again, we were there, we had a chance, but we just didn’t finish it. Give them credit for it.”

The frustration with Tennessee’s execution down the stretch

“You know, some of it is, some of these guys haven’t been in situations like this, a little bit of it. But by now, with as many games as we’ve played, I don’t buy that to be honest with you. I think it goes back to individual guys. We know our guys and we know we got some guys that are pretty cool, calm. Some guys we know get a little bit too emotional and kind of zone out at the wrong times. I mean, I think every team I’ve coached, there’s been different personalities like that, but it can’t happen at that time. I can only tell you that. I mean, when you work hard enough to get yourself in position to win on the road against anybody in this league, the mental part of it, you’ve gotta take care of it. And that’s on both the offensive end and the defensive end. The breakdowns that we had in the last 10 points they scored, it can’t (happen). I mean they made a couple shots, but it was our execution really.”

If it was more of an emphasis to take less threes in the rematch after taking 45 during the loss in Knoxville two weeks ago

“No, we didn’t. What we said, we were going to take ’em on our terms and that was, we wanted to drive, play inside out, still wanted to shoot it. I thought we did take a couple tough twos in the first half, but no, we were, again, I don’t have a problem with us shooting 35 threes if they’re on our terms. I really don’t. And our team doesn’t, but the fact is we wanted to put the ball inside more. We had chances to do it and we didn’t do it enough, but the biggest thing there, they didn’t have to guard us at all down there. We would just come down, not even pass the ball and shoot. They were in position to rebound the ball. So we tried to get more movement and make them guard a little bit because at our place they didn’t have to guard us at all. We just self-checked ourselves.”

What it does for Kentucky when Amari Williams can play point-center after starting point guard Lamont Butler left the game with a shoulder injury

“Well, again, Mark’s done a good job. I mean, he looks very comfortable doing that. That’s what he does. And you know, we’ve played against that the whole time down there (in Knoxville). And that’s part of this, when guys go out — you know, you go back to our game with Florida. We had two starters go out, guys stepped up and played. I mean, that’s what happens sometimes.

“But the fact is, I think Mark’s system is very sound. I think he’s put all his guys in position to where they can excel. With their five-out actions they run, he likes to get up there and if you don’t keep enough pressure on him, it’s like a quarterback in football, just getting to stand back there all day and he’s a good enough passer, he can pick you apart and do those type things. But again, I give credit to Mark and his system for putting his guys where they need to be.”

Kentucky struggling defensively throughout the season, if he’s seen UK make changes over the last couple of weeks

“Yeah, I thought they played hard tonight. I really did. You know, I think that, you know, there’s a lot of different ways to play defense. Some people like to really sag back in there and encourage you to shoot it quickly and say, ‘Hey, you know, you’re gonna have to shoot a jump shot, whatever.’ Some people play high-level personnel where they’re just going to stay with certain guys. So there’s a lot of different ways to play and, you know, our style is, you know, we’re gonna try to be more dictative where we can do what we think we can do. And for the most part, it’s worked for us. Not all the time, obviously it didn’t for 40 minutes tonight.

“I think what you’re asking me, if I think Kentucky’s gotten better, I do. I think they’ve gotten better all around with everything which you would expect from a coach that knows what he’s doing and a staff that knows what he’s doing. I think we’re better. You know, I think we’re better than we were three weeks ago, and I think we can get better if we’re willing to learn from our mistakes and learn to control some emotion at the right time.

“But again, it’s consistency. I’ve seen some teams play harder certain times and then they let down. One thing I’ve learned in this business is you can’t coach the other teams. You can’t. Because you’re not with ’em every day. You don’t know about injuries. You don’t know what they had to do to get prepared for the game. But I’m impressed with what Mark’s done since the two times that we’ve played against him.”

How he has seen Tennessee’s Igor Milicic Jr. become more comfortable within the offense

“I think he should be comfortable. But I think he’s gotta still slow down when he starts playing by himself and we don’t know what he’s doing sometimes. And he’s the guy that we need to be the most consistent guy on the court, both offensively and defensively. We need him to be consistent (with) what we can count on every single night. He’s going to get better. We’re, what, down to seven or eight games and then we (have the) postseason. So there’s a lot of time to improve and we need every one of our guys on our team to get better.”