What Rick Barnes said before Tennessee Basketball's first preseason practice

Everything Tennessee Basketball coach Rick Barnes said Tuesday afternoon before the Vols held their first official preseason practice at Pratt Pavilion:

His experiences with the NCAA Transfer Portal over the years and incorporating transfer players into a new roster

“We’ve had really good experience with (the portal) because I think the quality of people that we’ve recruited and the ones that, we sit down and talk to them, we’ve always point blank said to them, we want you to come here for the right reason first, then we can talk about the NIL. But we have been blessed that really the last couple years, I think our assistants have done a great job of the eval and the intel that we needed to get. So we’ve been really happy with what we’ve been able to accomplish with it.” 

The process of making sure players are interested for Tennessee for the right reasons

“Well, I think you got to find it out during the (recruiting) process. Always felt through the years there’s always been a lot of transfers, even back before the transfer portal, and I think a lot of it came because I think that kids were told things that coaches knew weren’t going to happen. I thought coaches were much responsible for that as anybody. But I think the key to all this is being honest and transparent. I think it’s important that they come on campus and spend time with the players and that our players answer questions for them as well. Let the parents ask our players questions and make it as real as you can make it and as transparent as you can make it. And I think if you do that you can solve a lot of problems before they ever really get festered.” 

How helpful it has been to sell Dalton Knecht’s success at Tennessee to players the Vols recruited out of the NCAA Transfer Portal  

“I think people certainly, again, we talked about transparency. With him a year ago this time, we had no idea Dalton was gonna do what he did. And we’re comparing Dalton or saying, hey, we’re expecting you to come in here and do what Dalton Knecht did. Because we didn’t know what he was going to do. He did it, he evolved into that. But the one thing that we will always do is not put anybody in the box when we first get here. We’re going to make sure that they understand that we want to see them grow in every area. And the only way we can do that is to throw a lot at them, give them the chance to show us what all they can do. And oftentimes, more times than not, we’re surprised to be quite honest. So that’s what we want to see when we bring people in and go from there. We can build a program to where we think what they need to do to help us right now.” 

What he’s liked about Tennessee sophomore Cade Phillips’ offseason

“A lot really. I think one, he had a tremendous spring. He really did a lot in the spring and he’s one of those guys that stuck around and put a lot of time into it. And I think Cade’s another example of what you put into the game is what you get back and he put a lot into it to improve and in the areas that we asked him to improve. And then we were really only had 10 scholarship players throughout the summer and he and Felix had to go against each other. And I don’t even know if they got a rep off all summer because they had to play. And looking at it right now, I think it was great for both of them. But with that said, they really competed against each other and both of them would tell you it helped them.”

What has surprised him about Tennessee’s incoming transfers

“I think all three (four) of our guys this year, we obviously had a lot of confidence with them coming in. And I can say this, that none of them had disappointed us. We knew it would be an adjustment for all of them, Understanding regardless of where they went, there were all three (four) going into a new situation. And even to throw Bishop into that being the only freshman that we signed. I mean, it was gonna be totally new to them. And regardless of how long they’d been in school and college and high school, that it’s a different game in the way the speed that we want to play with, the work ethic that we like from our players. But again, it goes back, our older guys have a lot to do with their growth by telling them, ‘Hey, this is how we do it.’ And we’ve always talked about when your older guys can really be the ones that help you through the coaching process. It makes it easier on everybody and our older guys did a good job of that.”

Who the Tennessee staff is trying to develop as a point guard option behind Zakai Zeigler

“All of them. We want versatility. We want those guys to be able to handle things because we do some different things where every guy does have a chance to handle a ball but Jordan’s played there. It’s a hard position to learn. Bishop I think’s done a good job with it, but it’s difficult when you’re going against Zakai Zeigler every day because what he done when Zakai was out those couple weeks— it was a little bit easier for him. And when Z came back, he realized it was a whole lot harder because he’s just going to fight you for bounce and every spot on the court that he knows he wants to get to, he’s not gonna give into it. But again, it’s helpful. He’s realized that it’s harder than he probably would imagine. But we’ve even used Igor there. Shack’s played every position there and certainly Chaz has been there. So we put a lot of different guys there and we will keep trying to create that so we can use different guys in different situations.”

On what he feels like he’s learned the most about this team the last couple of months:

“They wanna be good, they do. They work hard. It’s been tough because of the lack of numbers. We’ve got a pretty good scout team that we’ve had to use, but when you’ve only got 10 active scholarship players and go at each other the way we try to go at each other, and the fact that they’ve been competitive, they work at it and have really terrific attitudes. But they wanna be good. There’s no doubt. They want to be good and they want to get better. And you can tell that by the fact that they put so much time of their own, wanting to come back on their own to get better at the different things that we asked him to do.”

Who he feels good about being able to create off the dribble besides Zakai Zeigler

“I think a lot of them create off the dribble. (If) you mean getting by getting by people, the question is, ‘do you make the right read and the right pass?’ That’s up to us as coaches, we gotta help ’em with that. We gotta try to get ’em in as many situations. You’re not asking everybody to do that all the time, but you do want to get everybody in the position and now so much goes into scouting with analytics, you’re trying to, as much as you can, get them to know how they’re gonna be defended and what space on the floor is gonna be available to ’em. And because the one thing we always talk about, if you go looking for trouble, you’ll find it. But we would like to see all of our guys be aggressive attacking the basket, but with that said, they’ve gotta be able to make the right read when they get there.”

What Tennessee transfer forward Igor Milicic Jr.’s versatility can do from a spacing standpoint on offense

“Well, he’s unique and the fact that he really can play a lot of different positions, he has played a lot of different positions and he’ll be a guy that will play probably all five positions at some point in time. It’s fun to be honest with you because he allows you to do some things that maybe we haven’t done in the past and he’s gotten better with a lot of things. When I think about one thing we didn’t know, he’s a consistent rebounder, which we didn’t know that, especially offensively and very unselfish. When you got a guy with that versatility and with a mindset that he has of being unselfish, it’s fun to have because you can just mix things up with him, 

What he saw as the one thing that helped this Tennessee team develop over the offseason

“Again, I go back to Jahmai (Mashack) and Zakai (Zeigler), even we put Jordan Gainey in there letting ’em know what it’s about and how hard it is and how hard it is to compete at the very highest level when you wanna be one of the best teams in the country. Where there’s no off nights, but they would tell ’em there’s no off days when it comes to practice. And what they demand from themselves, they demand from their teammates. And so that has probably been a big highlight. We’ve had good leadership and I think the fact that these guys that haven’t been here came in and if they had an ego, they put it aside and they’ve been willing to learn, not only from the coaches, but from their teammates.”