Rick Barnes on his career results in the NCAA Tournament: 'It bothers me to no end'

Rick Barnes knows the numbers just like anyone else. They bother the veteran Tennessee coach just like they bother any other Tennessee fan, too. In his 37 seasons as a head coach, he wishes March had a little less madness.  

“The one thing I have always said is that the NCAA Tournament, I wish our teams would have done better,” Barnes said earlier this season during an appearance on The Vol Network’s Vol Calls. “It bothers me to no end.”

When No. 2 Tennessee (24-8) faces No. 15 Saint Peter’s (19-13) on Thursday (9:20 p.m. Eastern Time, TNT) at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, it will be the 28th appearance in the NCAA Tournament. 

He’s taken one team to the Final Four, three teams to the Elite Eight and eight teams (and three different schools) to the Sweet Sixteen. And there have been 19 first-weekend exits, including 12 losses in the first round and seven in the second round.

“But I also know this,” Barnes continued during the radio interview, “I have coached up to this point three teams that we felt like could win the national championship.”

The three teams Rick Barnes felt were title contenders

The first was the 2003 Texas team that went to the Final Four, losing to Syracuse in the national semifinal, with the Orange on their way to winning the national championship behind 33 points from a freshman named Carmelo Anthony. 

“I do think that would have been a championship game,” Barnes said, “because that was a great semifinal game.”

The LaMarcus Aldridge Texas team in 2006 was another title contender, winning 30 games before losing to LSU in overtime after Glen Davis and Tyrus Thomas combined for 47 points.

Five years ago in Louisville, the Vols came up one stop short of beating Purdue in the Sweet Sixteen, one possession any from getting Tennessee back to the Elite Eight for just the second time in program history.  

“Grant Williams, his last year here, had a shot,” Barnes said. “If we would have contested a shot at the elbow — and Grant came that close to stealing a pass — we would have moved on.”

Instead, Carsen Edwards hit two of three free throws to tie the game with two seconds left in regulation and Purdue won 99-94 after forcing overtime.

Tennessee’s 2022 team, a No. 3 seed and SEC Tournament champions that fell to No. 11 Michigan in the second round, could be included. Or even a year ago, when the Vols went to the Sweet Sixteen as a No. 4 seed only to be upset by ninth-seeded and Final Four-bound Florida Atlantic.

“Two years in a row here that we had a shot,” Barnes said. “Otherwise, I would tell you there are some teams that we had that just getting to the tournament was a big thing. We were picked where we weren’t supposed to be there.”

This Tennessee team is not one of those teams. These Vols, the preseason pick to win the SEC, won the league’s outright regular-season championship for the first time since 2008. Now they have the second-best odds, behind only No. 1-seed Purdue, to win the Midwest Region and go to the program’s first Final Four. 

But Barnes is the last one to get caught looking ahead. Or letting his players look ahead.

“We see it happen,” Barnes said. “You saw it happen a year ago with Purdue. I can assure you Matt Painter is a great basketball coach — everything he does, he’s got great schemes, they do this, they do that — but what happened, they were a No. 1 seed, supposed to win.

“The year before that, Kentucky, No. 2 against Saint Peter’s, supposed to win.”

Fairleigh Dickinson took down Purdue a year ago, then lost to FAU in the second round. Saint Peter’s, which played in Indianapolis alongside Tennessee in 2022, went to the Elite Eight after upsets over No. 2 Kentucky, No. 7 Murray State and No. 3 Purdue.  

“The fact is, the game stays close and you hope that you got enough older guys that expect it,” Barnes said. “You’ve got to expect that every game is going be a hard-fought game. If you go in and think, oh, this, whatever, however you want to look at odds, this, that, or whatever. That’s what you can’t do.”

Up Next: No. 2 Tennessee vs. No. 15 Saint Peter’s, Thursday, 9:20 p.m. ET, TNT 

Texas, the last No. 1 seed standing in 2003, beat No. 7 Michigan State 85-76 in the South Regional Final to advance to the Final Four in New Orleans, after going through UNC Asheville, Purdue and UConn. 

The memories for Barnes are still fresh if he lets his mind go there.

“I’ll never forget when we won the regional to go to the Final Four,” Barnes said. “TJ Ford came and picked me up and said, ‘We’re going to the Final Four!’ And Tom Izzo — we’ve been friends for a long time — he stood right there like a winner.”

Izzo had to wait because Ford wouldn’t let Barnes go.

“And I’m sitting there trying to shake Tom’s hand, but he had me in a bear hug,” Barnes said. “And Tom was smiling. He said, ‘Hey man, go win it. You won.’

“There are little things along the way that would come up if we sit here and talk long enough that it would come back to my memory.”

It’s the memories that are driving him to get back there, to the deepest rounds of the tournament, 21 years later.

“It’s really hard to win a national title,” Barnes said. “Believe me I wish we could win it. I know how hard it is and we have tried every year to be a team that plays on Monday (in the national championship game).

“I also know that there’s a lot that goes into it that sometimes we can’t control as much as we want to.”

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