What Rick Barnes said after Tennessee's 71-67 loss to Purdue in the Maui Invitational

Everything head coach Rick Barnes said after No. 7 Tennessee lost 71-67 to No. 2 Purdue in the semifinal round of the Maui Invitational Tuesday at the Stan Sheriff Center in Honolulu:

Opening Statement

“Really hard fought game. Utmost respect from Matt (Painter) and his team and his program. And we knew it was gonna be a physical basketball game. Both teams weren’t gonna shy away from that, and playing hard and not many things are easy to come by, obviously. (Zach) Edey is a hard guy to defend. They do a great job with so many different ways to try to get him the ball. And Zach, certainly worthy of National Player of the Year. And again, as a coaching staff, they do a tremendous job just making it hard to keep him from catching the ball where he wants to catch it, but really proud of our guys.

“We got down, we missed some shots that I think over time we’re going to make at a much higher percentage. But just our effort, got down, didn’t flinch.

We’ve been in those games before. We’re built for it. And  just wish we could have, made a couple more shots. We had some looks at it certainly, but need to get a little smarter in situations. But overall, the effort, what Shack (Jahmai Mashack) does, I mean, we honestly thought at the end of the game we would put him out there, he’d guard Zach because we knew he’d fight him and make it hard, get around the knees and make it hard for him to catch the ball. But just proud of the effort and obviously wish we’d come away with a win. But this time of year, we’ll learn a lot from it and, um, we’ll be better for it. And moving forward, we’re going to continue to grow and get better.”

How Tennessee approached defending Zach Edey

“As I mentioned, you know, Matt does really, a terrific offensive mind, scheme. What he does with how he adjusts for his players. He (Zach Edey) does a great job in knowing where he wants to catch the ball. We talk about it with our guys, you gotta fight for your space where you want it. They do different things to try to get him right where they want him to set up. I think the key is what we tried to do was keep a body on him, but not the traditional way where you try to get on the high side and then hope that, you know, we were certainly ready if they were gonna throw it over top, but  just keep moving around him. So  he couldn’t get set up where he would feel comfortable. 

“The ones we wanted to take away from him was, he had a couple of drop steps. We can’t give him those. And that happened against really the younger guys, but it’s the offensive rebounds. We  gave him too many of those and we needed to put a body on and get our hands up because we got our length there can deal with that on a rebound. Maybe not so much get where he wants to get with his speed, but we wanted to again, move, move him, try to move him and try to move around him. Just where he couldn’t get settled into where we thought he would be.

“I think if you try to lock in on one side, like you say you three quarter, he knows what to do. You go to the low side, he knows what to do. As long as you’re moving, it’s hard for him to sell you the way he wants to sell you. But defensively we, I think did good enough to win the game. It’s just we have some looks we need to knock down, proud of the effort and we’re better. We can be better. They’re gonna get better. We’re gonna get better.”

How difficult it was for Tennessee to play in that game based on how it was officiated on both ends

Jahmai Mashack: “I think for me and our team, really knew that it was gonna be a game like that. We knew it was gonna be a physical game. They’re a tough team and we’re a tough team. No matter how many times, some we lose, we never get used to it, you know, and games like this, you just have those plays play over and over in your head. You just try to think to yourself what you could’ve done better to help your team. And to answer your question, those, those games, they’re hard.

“They’re tough, but we’re resilient and I think we showed that today. And the reason why we were down, I don’t think it had anything to do with us for our toughness. We played that game four minutes, every four minutes and we went out and we did what we could and just a couple shots didn’t fall … but toughness wise, we did everything we could.”