Everything Rick Barnes said after No. 12 Tennessee's 77-55 win at Louisville

LOUISVILLE — Everything Rick Barnes said after No. 12 Tennessee led from start to finish in a 77-55 win over Louisville on Saturday afternoon at the KFC Yum! Center:

Opening Statement

“Really proud of the defensive effort. You guys that know us, we feel we got to get that lock down early. You look at Jahmai Mashack’s line, by this (box score) it’s not very impressive. From our line, I mean, he was just dominant. Guarded every position on the floor, guarded their post player. And does does all the things that go into winning. And his effort was great. I thought everyone’s effort defensively was there. 

“Hard team to guard. They run really good stuff. We knew they were going to shoot a lot of threes. I knew there’d be a lot of long rebounds. I thought they competed hard. Really, you look at the stat sheet, you will look at Zakai’s nine turnovers. But when they cut it to nine, he took the game over. And I thought really in the second half, I thought Felix (Okpara) settled in and did some great stuff around the rim for us. 

“But a lot a lot of good things. Got to get a lot better. Like, every coach this time of year would sit here and say two games into the season, a lot of room for improvement. But really just our defensive effort was — when they made the push to get back in, we weren’t very good. Got away from our scouting report. Probably didn’t play as hard as we needed to there, which is a tendency sometimes for players when you get a lead. But, again, when it got there, Zakai really responded to those threes.”

Tennessee’s Chaz Lanier having a tough practice on Friday and responding by playing well on Saturday 

“Well, you guys saw practice. It wasn’t one of his better days. And certainly he got tired of me getting after him. But the fact is, I thought to play the game for him and his teammates was when he went in early and tried to dunk the ball left-handed. And he did respond, and we expect it from him. And he’s got so much more to his game than he’s put out there. As a coaching staff you’ve got to get it out of him. His teammates want him to give it to us, and they know he can. But it’s all new for him. Think about it, a whole new level for him, everything is new. New program, in terms of he came from an outstanding program in North Florida. Terrific coach there, Matt Driscoll. But they played totally different than we play. And so for him to pick up try to pick up in a short time what Jahmai Mashack and Zakai and really our young guys, they’re going to be really good players for us. (Lanier is) working at it. I know he realizes it’s a lot harder than he probably thought.” 

Zakai Zeigler having nine turnovers in the first half but Tennessee still be able to control the game, lead by 22 points

“Well, it was our defense, it really was. It kept us in there. And, again, like I said, they’re a really well-coached basketball team. Run hard stuff. They keep you moving. And sometimes our offense will sputter like that, because you guys know there’s no one that is going to play harder on the floor defensively than him, and he’s normally doing it 94 feet. When you play that hard, you put teams deep into possessions like we do, and we expect to get teams deep in the clock defensively, and when that happens, we’ll end up with some kind of ball screen, which probably 85% of the time, he’s the guy that is getting tagged. And for him to keep keep fighting through that and play with the stamina that he does is really impressive. But him losing the ball, again, got to give them a little bit of that credit, too, because they were attacking them pretty well, not giving them any gaps to get through. But again, it’s a long game. whether you’re winning or losing, I just told them we gotta keep playing regardless and we did.” 

What he learned about his Tennessee team after Louisville cut its lead to nine points 

“What we learned, we just went to a little horn set, put it in the Zakai’s hand, and he’s done it many times where, you know, they go under and play, he’s not afraid to shoot. He had a long one that I mean, the one that went in at the clock. You don’t get many of those, but we did have to settle him down a little bit, trying to give him a chance to go either way he wanted to go.”

What Cade Phillips gave Tennessee

“But we think Cade has a chance — our goal for him is to be another Jahmai Mashack. That’s our goal for him. And it’s a lofty goal as a coaching staff, it’s a lot for him. There’s no doubt he wants to do it, and there’s no doubt he has the ability to do it. It’s just the more he can get out on the court, the lights rolling and play and get comfortable. He’ll get better with all of it. Every part of his game, he’ll get better.”

The key for him turning around the Tennessee program after missing the tournament his first two years

“Well, again, Pat’s (Kelsey) gonna do a great job. There’s no doubt. I mean, he knows what he’s doing. He’s been here and everyone uses the word culture, but everybody has a culture. And that will be the hardest and first thing that he will get. And it took us a couple years to get it where we wanted it. The game’s changed from 10 years ago, though. There was no transfer portal back then. We decided that we were gonna recruit guys to fit our system. We didn’t care if they were 2-star, 3-star, 4-star, we didn’t care. We went a long way, a long time without recruiting any, quote, unquote, 5-star players. And we believed in what we were trying to do. The coaching staff was all-in on it. But the key is creating what your identity is gonna be. That’s the single biggest thing. And we have always tried for us, you go on the road just like tonight. There came a time in that game when they got it to nine (points), (that) is one of the great crowds in college basketball, and they were waiting just to blow the top off. And when we made some plays offensively, but still it got back to where we got stops. And that’s the one thing that we said, on nights when we don’t shoot well, we’ve got to put ourselves in position to win every night, and the only way we can do that is defensively. And when we really got to that point, and it took it took a while, I think it’s gonna be even harder today with the portal because as I mentioned with Chaz, with Igor who played today, we’re asking them to do something at the level that they’ve never been asked to do, and they’ve only got a couple of months to try to figure that out. They’re older, so we expect them to be able to pick it up quicker. But it’s a different game than it was 10 years when it terms of how recruiting goes with the portal and all that.”

What he learned about Lanier and Milicic playing in that level of environment for the first time

“I thought Igor’s drive was a big play. I thought that was a big play for us. I thought his three was a big play. It came in the flow. He’s a guy that we know can shoot the ball. I mean, he’s got a history of being a 38, 39 percent three-point shooter. Got in foul trouble early. Would have played more, obviously, than he did tonight. 

“Chaz is (a) pretty cool guy, calm guy. You guys watch practice. I mean, he is the main target for me pretty much every day because I see what he can be. I would say Igor, too. Both of those guys are guys that I know — going back to the other question about getting there quickly, Coaches can never quit on their team, and you can’t quit on players even if they might frustrate you day in and day out by not picking up the little detailed things. But it’s our job to stay after it because we’re not gonna ask them to do something they can’t do. But really, we’re proud of both of those guys. They know that they’re important. We need them to grow quicker maybe than they might want to, but I can tell you they both care a lot. They really care about their teammates. They both care about the game.”

How he saw Tennessee’s defense impact Louisville’s offense

“We’re a physical team. I think that most teams we play against know that we’re gonna be physical, and what that means is, perimeter, you know, trying to run through handoffs, people play out of zoom action — whatever they play out of. But we also have the ability to switch because we’ve got some guards that can guard. We’ve gotten pretty good at knowing how to do some kick out when we get a guard there and the post guy sees it and we kick the guard back out.

“We felt one of the big keys today was perimeter defense. We thought that was really important because we’re a heavy help team. We talk a lot about winning those one-on-one matchups on the ball, which is really hard to do because guys can go with it. Transition defense was really important early. We really did a good job there because going back to what we’ve seen on their team right now, we knew we didn’t want them to get much in transition. We wanted them to play against a set defense. We felt the same way. We didn’t wanna play against their set defense. We wanted to try to get some, and I thought both teams played really, really hard, but we felt our perimeter defense had to be good. We’d obviously like to post the ball and we knew if we did, they were gonna come hard after it. A lot of room down there. It’s a lot easier to talk about posting it than it is to actually do it because they’re a well-coached team. They had their plans. They stayed with it and missed shots, but we feel that even with our help defense, we can still guard the three-point line. We don’t ever wanna foul a three-point shooter, which we did once or twice. 

“Our defense was really what we talked about all week getting ready to come in here. We did a couple of things offensively, but mostly what we need to do (with) our out of bounds defense is all that. Just to be as disruptive as we possibly could without fouling. We did foul too much. We just try to be disruptive and try to force people out of what they really wanna do.”