Rick Barnes looks back at Maui Invitational, previews Tennessee at North Carolina

Tennessee coach Rick Barnes met with reporters on Monday afternoon before practice at Thompson-Boling Arena, looking back at last week’s Maui Invitational and previewing the trip to North Carolina on Wednesday (7:15 p.m. Eastern Time, ESPN):

His biggest takeaways from Tennessee’s play in the Maui Invitational

“I think the biggest would be balance. Want to get a little more balanced. We’ve gotta get our post guys involved a little bit more than they have been. And that works both ways. They’ve gotta do their part, our perimeter guys have to do their part. And still there’s not one area that we can say we’re there yet. We’ve gotta continue to improve with, again, I’ll always talk about our ball-screen defense and we’ve gotta do a better job of keeping our hips square. We got beat too many times where we gave up straight line drives that put us in rotation and took us outta rebound position. But fundamentals, it goes back to the fundamentals. We’ve gotta continue to build those.”

How beneficial it was for Tennessee’s post players to face bigs like Zach Edey and Hunter Dickinson in the Maui Invitational and North Carolina’s Armando Bacot on Wednesday

“Well, you’re talking about three of the premier, best post guys in the country. And they all have a different game. But they all present problems in the fact that they know where they want the ball, they know what they can do with it when it gets there. And those guys are good too because of their supporting cast they surround themselves with. I think Purdue does a a great job with how they run their schemes and certainly Bill (Self) at Kansas, what he does with his group to get them to understand where he wants the ball when he wants it. And I think Hubert Davis has done a really good job blending these young guys in with where they want them to be. And I think they’re a much improved team from a year ago. I look at all those teams and I throw us in there too. We’re all gonna get better and we continue to work the way we need to work.”

Where Tennessee’s Zakai Zeigler is in terms of settling in and getting comfortable 

“I think that’s it. I mean, he’s such a competitive player and we all love him for what his DNA and what he’s about. But like any player that goes through what he did, I mean, his frustrations … because no one has worked harder than he has to get back. And thinking that he’s gonna be able to pick it right up. And it’s hard to go as long as he went without really getting the feel for the time off. Even though he worked, he did everything he possibly could, but he’s pressing.

“But we practiced sat Saturday. I thought he was really good. I think he learned, we talked about things that we need to improve from Maui trip and obviously we need to have consistent, good guard play. Especially at the point position. And he knows we’re counting on him to do that. And he’s all about our team. He’s all about winning, but he wants it, he wants it back right now. And he’s more hard on himself than you can imagine. But he’ll get it.”

If starting Zakai Zeigler is an option, if it could help him settle in

“Good question. All those (options) we think about. I think that again that’s a great question because I’m not sure of that answer, but it’s something that we’ve thought about with him. All we know is that he’s going to get it and when he’s out there, he changes the floor on both ends. But we have to make a move maybe to help him mentally, that’s what we will do. I’m not sure about that because I really don’t care who starts. I don’t. Because we’ve got an experienced group of guys and I don’t think they care. They just want to win and they know we’ve got guys we’ve got to get into the rotation and the best way we can do that. But we’re not afraid to (be) looking at it.”

If there’s an updated status for Tennessee’s Freddie Dilione. V (foot)

“I think it’s day to day. We got back. He didn’t do do anything with us. We gotta get him healthy. That’s, that’s a tough one. I mean, if you don’t get it fixed, it, it’ll linger all year. And we don’t want that. We’re still in November and we got a long way to go. So we gotta make sure we get him totally healthy and before we can get him back out there.”

Tennessee’s Jahmai Mashack’s play at point guard

“I think he’s pressed hard. I think he’s tried. He’s been overly aggressive and he knows it because he wants to make it happen now. He comes in and he wants to change the game. That’s what he’s done. He’s gonna be fine. You look at his numbers, they’re not impressive obviously, but that’s not who he is. We know who he is. We believe in him. His teammates believe in him. We know that he’s a game-changer. He’s a major factor. I’m not surprised. I think as a coaching staff, we’re not. We knew as much as he’s worked and was out here practicing, the games are different. But he’s been there before and again, he’ll get it back.”

Josiah-Jordan James struggling in the final two games of the Maui Invitational

“Well, I think the one guy I was concerned about in the last game was him. He played more minutes than we wanted him to play (against Syracuse and Purdue). I think was tough. I don’t know. Well, I do know. I’ve never had to get a team up at 6, 6:30 in the morning to go play a basketball game. We had to do that twice. But he was the one guy going into the game with Kansas that I was concerned about because I thought his matchup was important. But Jo, I do think fatigue was a factor with him in the last game and that’s my fault. That’s on me and and I probably should have gotten some other guys out there but he’ll be fine.”

If he still gets excited to play North Carolina after growing up in the state, his run with Dean Smith

“Maybe years ago but not now. First of all, I’ve got great respect for the University of North Carolina and, I mean, it’s a storied tradition and everyone that is from North Carolina knows about it, know what it’s about. And I have great respect for Hubert Davis. He was, when I became a head coach, he was the very first player I recruited. He grew up, literally, his high school was literally a quarter of a mile from George Mason. He would come over and shoot at George Mason. I can remember sitting on the front bricks out in front of the gym talking to him. And at the time he wasn’t being highly recruited and obviously he grew up wanting to go to North Carolina. I did in high school play against his uncle Walter Davis. So he grew up a huge Carolina (fan) and he basically just said, hey, gimme a chance. And, he went there and made the most of it. And just a great human being and a person I have great respect for. His whole staff. I mean, I’ve watched all those guys that seem like grow up through the years, but the fact is that I’ve always thought these are the two leagues that should be playing in a challenge, being as close as we are, border up against each other. And I think it’s gonna be good for both leagues.”

What he liked about what Tennessee freshman forward JP Estrella gave them in Maui Invitational

“We were all, those were huge minutes. And to be quite honest, we weren’t sure what we would get because, we are still waiting on him to understand what we know about him. We think he’s got a chance to be a major factor but we’ve gotta get him understanding how hard you’ve gotta play and the little things you’ve gotta do. And when you’re playing the kind of competition you’re playing this time of year, possessions matter. I mean, you’re gonna be in a possession game and you realize it, but when he went in, he, those minutes were valuable.

“Maybe the most valuable minutes for us as a program because we know he can do it. And he went in and did the things we wanted him to do, just getting his hand on the ball and he’s gonna end up being a shot blocker. But the more he understands how much we need him and the more he understands how hard it is to play this game night in and night out will be really the key to how quickly he progresses.”

How he would assess the pace Tennessee is playing with on the offensive end

“Well, we are. We missed a lot of shots now and I mean, there’s, when you shoot it,  that’s what I’m talking about balance. We got guys that we have what we would call green light shooters. If they’re open, we expect them to shoot it, but when those aren’t going in where we got hurt, especially in the Kansas game early, we weren’t getting any thrust on the boards. We were shooting it and had good shots. I don’t really, maybe one, one of those shots is what I wouldn’t consider a high quality shot, but we had good looks at it with the right guys but we did not have any pursuit on the glass. And, again, we want to play quick, we want to play fast, but we’ve gotta have more activity going to get it. Not just making the effort to walk in and we gotta go get it. But overall we’ve just, what we’re doing, we’ve just gotta continue to get better with it, continue to shoot the ball, but we’ve gotta get a little more balanced with our inside guys touching it.”

If slow starts or not defending well enough were problems for Tennessee against Purdue and Kansas

“No, I don’t think it’s any one of those. I mean, you’re playing high quality teams and we’re right there. I mean, you’re talking, what, the number one and number two teams in the country and do I think we’re as good? Yeah, I think we are. But that doesn’t matter unless you win the game. But I’d rather learn something right now because — I actually told the guys, I didn’t think we played as hard in the last game, and I can make all the excuses I want in terms of, Kansas only had to play one real tough game. They got Chaminade, but they still, too, had to get up early and they played later than us.

“These are all the things that people throw at me, but when I watched the film, what I saw was we didn’t play as hard enough as we needed to. And I could say, was that fatigue with Josiah? Definitely. I can say that because he put a lot of minutes in. But overall, it’s just a matter of everybody understanding that we’ve gotta get better and we might’ve gotten the wrong message if we’d have won the last game by not putting the kind of effort in that I think it’s gonna take to win a championship. So we gotta make sure that we never take that for granted. But we still need our young guys to make quick jumps, but we need our older guys to continue to get better too.”

The next step for Tennessee guard Jordan Gainey

“Well, I mean, the narrative out there, I hear it all the time and people ask me about it, is, when he and Dalton (Knecht) are in the game, we’re better offensively but we’re not as good defensively. And the other way, with the older group, we’re better defensively, but when Kansas made their run, we had our older group out there. So I’m not sure that’s true. What I would say about Jordan, I’d say about Jahmai (Mashack), Z (Zeigler), Santi (Vescovi), Josiah (James), we all have to get better, coaches, (too). We all gotta get better.

“I don’t want to be in a situation where we have to go offense, defense, all that. I don’t. I want those guys to look at — each guy’s gotta look at what they’ve gotta do right now to get better and understand the role on the team they’re playing right now, knowing full-well roles can change as the season goes on. I mean, JP (Estrella) could make some things happen if we could get some consistency from him. And I guess the message that I was talking about the other day is just that consistency. What are we gonna get every day from each guy and from our team? Once we get that, we’ll get moving in a direction that we wanna go.”