For the first time since Cade Phillips underwent season-ending shoulder surgery, Tennessee basketball made a change to its starting lineup in the Vols’ 80-78 loss against Kentucky on Saturday afternoon. The Vols inserted junior Jaylen Carey to the starting lineup while removing freshman DeWayne Brown.
Carey has played more minutes than Brown in 13 of Tennessee’s first 17 games but Tennessee had started Brown because of his consistency in practice. Why did Rick Barnes decide to make a change against Kentucky?
“The reason we chose not to start DeWayne was maybe to relieve a little bit of pressure, and let him see it coming off the bench,” Barnes said postgame. “I know starting is important to guys even though I’ve never put a lot into it. So when you do put somebody in the lineup, you are wanting to give it to somebody who’s really earned it and in this situation, I don’t even think anybody earned it other than we were trying to help DeWayne with it. … The reason that we didn’t start him was simply I thought it might help DeWayne to see and it just so happened that we just decided as a staff we’d give Jaylen a shot at it and go from there.”
The move had mixed results. Brown played pretty well coming off the bench, totaling seven points, two rebounds, two assists, two blocks, one steal and one turnover in 19 minutes. By no means was he spectacular. Tennessee needs more than two rebounds in 19 minutes. But Brown was solid overall and performed better than he had earlier in the week against Texas A&M.
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Results were less positive for Carey. The Vanderbilt transfer made two early baskets before finishing the game with six points on three-of-12 shooting from the field. He was solid in other areas, seven rebounds and three assists, but didn’t give Tennessee enough of an inside presence offensively.
Barnes noted postgame that he thought Carey shot too much and would have liked to see Nate Ament take more than seven shots. He also remarked that maybe Tennessee should have gone smaller with its starting lineup.
“I could say today, well maybe we should have thought about going the other way, with maybe Nate at the four and a guard there,” Barnes said. “I can talk about some of our guards, too, the consistency part of it.”
Tennessee played Nate Ament at the four for a part of the second half and that lineup was good offensively but dreadful defensively. Of course, nearly every lineup the Vols played was poor defensively.
But Barnes lack of conviction is notable if not unsurprising. Tennessee has started three different players at both the two-guard and power forward spot this season. The Vols are 5-6 against power five competition and 2-3 in SEC play, entering its midweek open date searching for answers.
