Tennessee basketball handed Texas its second straight SEC loss on Tuesday night, knocking off the Longhorns’ 85-71 in Knoxville.
Following the game, Texas head coach Sean Miller discussed his team’s efforts, trying to find an identity and much more. Here’s everything Miller said.
More From RTI: Everything Tennessee HC Rick Barnes Said After Win Over Texas
Opening Statement
“I just want to acknowledge and a really compliment Tennessee. There’s a lot about Coach Barnes that I love. I’ve known him for a long, long time. I’m not really just speaking on the incredible run that he had in Texas at one point. I played against him when he was the coach of Providence. And we go back, when he was at Clemson, I was in the ACC as an assistant. I just think the job he’s done building this program is incredible. What they stand for, the physicality and the togetherness, the defense, the toughness. Those are all things that, given the opportunity to be the new coach at Texas, that we have to get to.
“And I’ll just say this on my end, that tonight was about one thing. We have to be able to put a group of guys on the court that are going to play their very, very hardest with great effort for the University of Texas. Period. Guys like the LaMarcus Aldridge, Kevin Durant, they deserve a team, whether we win or lose, that’s playing a game for each other. Playing a game for the great place that we all live at and playing to win.
“And I just think that sometimes when you get a new opportunity in the pressure of today, you can be clouded a little bit about what’s important. There’s nothing that’s more important than effort. And I thought that to some degree that came into play against Mississippi State in our last game. And I thought there were times, in spite of how good of a team Tennessee has, that we cooperated just with guys that just really didn’t want to compete.
“In the second half when we went with a certain group. And I have a lot of pride in the fact that the score was 38-37 (in the second half). We keep deflections as a barometer. We ended up at about 29. Most of those came with that group in. And it wasn’t always pretty, but I have no problem with the effort level and the togetherness of my team from about the 14-minute mark to zero in the second half. And it wasn’t pretty and we didn’t win. But when you establish that we’re going to play hard, and what we talk about as a coach you have to do, I think that’s the starting in the building blocks of hopefully one day building a foundation like you guys have here at Tennessee under Coach Barnes.”
So we’re only in our second game in SEC. We’re not a very good team. We have a long way to go. But what we have to do is we have to be a team that’s connected and plays the game with great, great effort. And the thing that I would tell you about Tennessee, they do those two things. It’s admirable.”
On the progress they’re making in finding an identity
“We’re not making any. There’s some things that I think we’ve done well at times. Defensive rebounding. But right now we’re playing against, well today we played against the best offensive rebounding team in the country and they got us. They do that to a lot of teams. I think if you look at the rebounding, we ended up getting 15 second shots. A lot of our second shots came though, what I’m talking about, which was mid-second half, right? With effort, more effort, you can’t get second shots unless you’re playing lights out, especially against these guys, right? You have to really go and I thought there were a number of guys who really tried to create those second shot opportunities with effort. We want to play with pace and togetherness, but we weren’t really able to do that tonight.
Some of it is, Tennessee is such an excellent defensive team that they take some of those things away. But we have to establish that— I’m playing for the University of Texas. I play for Sean Miller. He’s the coach, what he says goes, this is how we do it. I play for myself, I play for my teammates. Mostly, I’m caught up in the moment. Like I’m playing a game I love and I’m gonna play as fast and as hard as I can. If you can’t play with effort, it’s going to be very, very hard next couple months. And I think you’ll see that our lineup has to change. I can’t keep playing with certain guys. We’re at that point, but we’re just going have to go. Whoever’s ready to play hard, we have to go with them because that’s going to be our best bet.”
On Texas being able to make a couple runs, but not being able to get over the hump
“You know, I thought Tennessee was better than us. You know, right when you are like, ‘man, they could get it under 10,’ they would answer. You know, they played with a big lead throughout the game and sometimes when you’re the team playing with the big lead, it’s hard to sustain that effort. But when they really needed to clamp down, they did. You know, I also think from a free throw perspective, I think they missed some free throws, which always helps. That’s something we did well once we got over, I thought maybe the jitters at the beginning, whatever that was, we ended up going 16-of-20 from the free-throw line, which was good to see.”
On if he’s surprised he’s having to talk about effort this time of the year
“You know, I became the co-chair on March 28 and it was a very chaotic 10 weeks, eight weeks after. You know, in today’s world, when you come in, it’s kind of like you got a clean slate and you have to make a lot of decisions and build a team in a hurry. So, no, I think we learn more and more about individuals on our team. I think we learn more and more about our team as each practice, each week, goes and really the next opportunity, right? You learn from Mississippi State. I thought I learned a lot tonight. We had a couple guys that just really didn’t want to play. And if you don’t want to play, you’re not allowed to enter the game. You just can’t be the guy caught up in your own world, your own effort level, things that are happening to you. It’s so much about this game, it’s about the team, and you have to be able to play defense and offense. I liked our effort so much better in the second half and one of the reasons our effort level was good is, the guys in the game we’re playing at a much greater effort level.”
On Tennessee slowing down Texas leading scorer Dailyn Swain:
“Dailyn was amazing against Mississippi State, but there’s a difference between being amazing against Mississippi State on Saturday and then being able to, on a quick turnaround, play good again. You know, that’s the role on our team that he has, where night in, night out, he’s gonna be a marked man. He has to play well. He didn’t have it tonight. You know, he had seven turnovers in 22 minutes and could have had 10 turnovers.”
“They’ve definitely grown a lot. I’d say they’re the most mature freshmen I’ve probably ever played with. All of them can really make an impact on the court. So it’s really cool to see how much they’ve come along since the summer.
