Tennessee basketball suffered a major upset on Tuesday night as they fell to South Carolina 63-59 in Knoxville. The loss ended a five-game winning streak over the Gamecocks and was their first loss at home this season.
The Vols’ offense struggled mightily as Dalton Knecht went for 31 of Tennessee’s 59 points in the upset loss.
Barnes discussed the offensive struggles, some defensive lapses and much more. Here’s everything Barnes said after the loss.
More From RTI: Three Quick Takeaways On Tennessee’s Loss Against South Carolina
On Zakai Zeigler’s struggle in the loss, going 0-for-6 from the field
“Well, I thought he got out of rhythm in terms of what he normally gives us. He started pressing and started losing his overall displace in terms of what we need him to do on both offense and defense. One time, he went down on the defensive end and went off for a steal where nobody knew what was going on. They ended up getting a three out of it. It wasn’t Zakai. You can’t leave — you can’t miss 10 point-blank layups and do what we did on the free-throw line and expect to win. Lamont (Paris) has done a great job and I don’t want to take anything away from the fact that they came in and have done what they have done all year. They have been steady and execute and do what they need to do to win games. We didn’t deserve to win this game. We had some good looks at it then all at once you start missing those shots. They start looking around, Dalton (Knecht), we need you to step up here and do something and waiting on him to make every play. It is not fair to do that to him. If you make those layups at the rate that we should have been, then adjustments take place in the game, but we didn’t. Two games in a row we have done a really poor job on the free-throw line. Early in the game, every one of our key guys that we have counted on, our No. 1 emphasis was rebounding. Those guys gave up one offensive rebound. Give South Carolina credit. We told them they are a really good rebounding team and they went and got it done. We started switching in the first half on sets that we have never done it. I said (to the) coaches, what are we doing? They didn’t throw anything at us that the coaches hadn’t talked about in the scouting. We just lost our discipline all around early on pretty much on both ends of the court.”
On other Tennessee players needing to do more to help Dalton Knecht when his shots weren’t falling for most of the second half
“Well, I think we know what to do is get him the ball, that he’s proven he can go. I mean, look at his numbers, you say he wasn’t making shots, he shot him was 50%. I mean, volume shooter, I mean, and he’s not a volume shooter, but we need you look down the line. I mean, I can talk about guys miss shots, but you can’t miss layups. I’m just telling you, you can’t. The game is too hard when you got a chance to dunk the ball or finish, and we can’t. I mean, Dalton hasn’t done a good job on the free-throw line in the last two games. And every time we had a chance to maybe crawl back in it, I think Zakai was 2-for-4 (at the foul line). What was Jonas from the free-throw line (2-4)? Dalton (6-10)? I mean, those are three guys who we want there. And again, we didn’t do a good job on the free-throw line.”
On South Carolina having success making corner three-pointer
“I’m going to tell you right now, I promise you will meet every one of our defensive goals. I guarantee it. But we’re not going to beat them being that pathetic on offense as a team. They’re going to make some shots. I mean, they’ve lost three games. And because we were over helping a little bit, going to make some plays that we should be making, but we’re not going to stop guys from shooting the ball and they give them credit. They made those shots but, again, they scored what, 63 points? Our goal is to try to keep people under 69. I mean, we were just a really poor offensive team tonight.”
On what went wrong for Jonas Aidoo on the offensive end
“I can’t answer that. I wish I could, I really wish I could.”
On if the layups and missed assignments due to a lack of focus
“You know what, that’s what I told our guys. I didn’t didn’t particularly like our focus overall at Vandy in terms of the way we came out after that week off. And, again, I don’t think we’re not playing hard, but I do think it’s focus to details, discipline, and we got an older group of guys that shouldn’t happen, but, I mean, first four minutes of the game pretty much set the tone for what was going to happen. Because you start missing those layups and those shots like that and it just puts, you’re like ‘uh oh, here we go.’ And we’ve seen it happen before and it’s tough.”
On if he thinks the team found false confidence from overcoming a poor first half at Vanderbilt
“That’s probably a pretty good comment. You know, maybe thinking that we’re something that we can pick and choose when we play and that got into tonight though. But, again, I don’t know how to answer that. Players have to answer that but if that was the case, it got answered tonight. That we better understand that we’re not good enough to think that we can’t show up and play every possession. I would say that about any team in the country though.”
On his team overcoming “oh no, here we go again” moments and if he was surprised that it didn’t happen tonight
“I was surprised at the shots we missed early. We got what we were looking for and just, I was baffled by that a little bit. And the free throws, I mean, I know you can have some tough nights there, but certain guys go up there, you expect them to be pretty consistent there. And what I was probably more baffled by was our lack of discipline on the defensive end in terms of what our gameplan was.”
On if he was surprised a veteran-team lacked focus this time of year:
“I think you can go through it. I mean, I’ve been doing this so long, I’m not surprised by anything. I mean, I’m not, but we’ll find out what we’re made of. I mean, obviously it’s not gonna get any easier. I don’t care if you’re going to Kentucky or anywhere else in this league, you gotta be ready to play at home or on the road. And I’m not sure I’d call it an upset just because we have a number in front of us. If you look at their record, they had a better record than us coming in overall because we’re supposedly the number five team in the country, we certainly didn’t play like it, I can tell you that ’cause you don’t make some of the mistakes that we made tonight with our execution.”
On why he went to a small-ball lineup late
“Well, we think Jahmai (Mashack) can guard anybody. They scored some buckets out of it, but we thought that he could go do that. And honestly, Jonas was struggling. Our post guys were struggling. I mean, point blank, they were struggling. So we’ve used that line up and, you know, I don’t want to sit around and hope somebody’s going to play well. You know, you look at the minutes and you see guys that have played 30 minutes on down and they’re not give it to you, how long (do) you wait, you know? Does he have it or not? And we got enough guys on his team that have earned a right to have a shot at it and see if they can do something.”
One Response
One person can’t win the game you have to have supporting cast to help , that’s called a teamwork