CHICAGO — Tennessee basketball is elite again, using a massive second half to coast past two-seed Iowa State 76-62 to advance to the Elite Eight for a third straight season.
Following the game, Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes discussed the production of the Vols’ front court, slowing down Milan Momcilovic and much more. Here’s everything Barnes said.
More From RTI: Three Quick Takeaways As Tennessee Basketball’s Bigs Deliver In Sweet 16 Win Over Iowa State
Opening statement
“One, very humbled by it. Certainly proud of our basketball team. They worked really hard. Defensively, I thought we knew we would have to have a great effort defensively. Certainly Iowa State, outstanding. T.J., outstanding program, coach.
This time of year is always tough when you lose a key guy like they did, and that’s part of the tournament. That’s the tough part about it, but just really proud of our guys and the effort they made and against a team that they play as hard as any team we played all year.
The start of the game, I don’t think we’ve seen anything like that all year, and we were able to withstand it. Again, just really proud of the effort from our entire team. Everybody had a hand in us winning this game.”
On slowing down Iowa State sharpshooter Milan Momcilovic
“Our game plan was to give him no daylight whatsoever. We felt like if he had six inches, he could get the shot off. We didn’t do a very good job. Again, give him all the credit. We felt like the turnovers, if we turned it over, which we did way too much, they could get out in transition. They’re elite. And those were the ones we were most concerned about.
But we were — if he got any separation, we were going to switch. It didn’t matter who, big guy. We were going to switch. That person, we worked for a couple of days, talked about it obviously from the beginning. You’re not going to leave him. You’re not getting off of him. We’re just going to stay there.
Obviously Bishop sets a great tone for us. Ethan guarded. But our — Felix. There are so many good things for our guys. The game plan was not to give him one ounce of daylight.”
On progressing over the course of the season
“That right there is the biggest thing, because we went all year for the most part where we didn’t know what to expect from our sixth guy all the way down. We didn’t know. We searched a lot of different ways trying to figure it out, and we were looking for some consistency.
Then we started, again, just trying to get guys. They would just come in, take care of the ball, and guard, we had find a way to get settled in.
Ethan is a guy that we know can guard. That’s one of the things late when we signed him. But Amari picked it up. Bishop has been consistently good there all year.
As a group, they’ve bought into what we needed to do, and we just said we’re going to put it all on the defensive end and find a way. One of the reasons we’re one of the leading offensive rebounding teams is because we miss a lot of shots we shouldn’t miss. But give the guys all the credit. They like each other, and they worked hard for each other.”
On making three straight Sweet 16s, sustained success
“I don’t know. I’m not sure what it is other than the fact that God has blessed me with a great job, good players. We have 11 new ones this year. We do have a standard on a lot of things. It’s not just what we do on the basketball court. You know, we’re pretty much a no-nonsense program. We talk about that through the recruiting process.
We tell everyone it’s going to be tough. We want them to come and want to help them live their dreams, and along the way we would love to have a chance to play for a national championship.
It goes back to the entire program and just blessed that God has put so many wonderful people around us, and they work really hard. They work really hard.”
On Jaylen Carey’s season
“I’m really happy because if I put all the chips on the table, I have been after Jaylen harder than anybody all year, anybody. There’s days he looked at me like, man, this dude is crazy; but he never said a word, kept going. He does what he needs to do.
I’m really happy for him. I really am. But he did say what he said. He didn’t miss many reps all year long with the other guys, and they really did go at each other. There were some days that got, you know, pretty physical obviously. Anytime you see someone that goes through the peaks and valleys and comes up big in a game like this, you’re elated for them. You really are.
Great kid, and he was the first kid in the portal last year, other than Ja’Kobi, that we set our eyes on, because felt like we had no presence inside physically. I think he’s helped all of them in some ways be more physical.”
On if he adjusted anything after the 2022 Round of 32 loss against Michigan
“Not really. Not really. I’m not going to sit here and act like I’ve tried to figure something out, because I haven’t. We try to be consistent. I try to — as a staff, we try to be same every day.
They know what we are looking for, what we expect. You know, we coach every guy on the team, walk-ons included. We have a great group of guys at this time of year that do — assimilate the other team’s stuff. And those guys this week were awesome, and they have been all year. Because we didn’t feel like we had time to teach other guys to learn their stuff, because they were still trying to learn what we were trying to get done.
Again, it’s just a real blessing. I’m blessed. Again, I thank God for it.”
On if this type of performance is what he envisioned with this front court
“Yeah, last year we had no post presence at all. You know, we knew at some point in time that we were going to have to get it. Again, I can’t say enough about Felix’s improvement, his development. JP has fought the injuries through the year. Obviously DeWayne Brown, big surprise. Probably every year you get a group of guys, someone will disappoint you, and someone might surprise you. DeWayne has been the biggest surprise. We lost Cade Phillips, which hurt us, but DeWayne gave us an opportunity to get some minutes, and obviously Jaylen.
Nate gives us a very big frontline, so we just knew that we had to someway, somehow get some kind of presence inside. Those guys were great. We felt tonight coming into this game we were going to have to hit them hard with those short rolls, and our opposing guys were going to have to make plays, and they did a great job for us tonight. Because we knew they would guard us the way they guard everybody, and our front line did a lot of great things just handling the ball for us.”
On strong offensive ball movement
“Well, I told the team at halftime, I said, look, this isn’t a game that we’re going to run offense. We’re going to play offense. We’re going to spread it and keep the ball in the middle third, and we’re going to play.
It’s what we worked on all week. That was the only time I really was getting upset, was guys bringing it down the sideline. They’re great. When you are over there, you’re looking for trouble. That’s what we did. We stayed in the same set pretty much the entire second half. They went zone, which I was glad we were able to get something out of that.”
On doing a better job of taking care of the ball in the second half
“Again, we’ve improved there all the way around, but we like to get Ja’Kobi off the ball some. One, he moves well without it, and we’re able to do that because of Bishop’s improvement. Certainly Ethan coming in doing it. It’s a combination of guys getting better right now.”
On if it feels different making the Elite Eight with a six-seed
“It really hasn’t hit me yet, to be honest with you. That’s the honest truth.
The group we got last two years prior to this, guys from day one they were with us. We came in with 11 new players. I felt like we had improved in a lot of different areas. If we could bring it all together — and there’s — to be very honest with you, I thought we should have won more games in the regular season, but when you turned it over the way we did the last four or five minutes, that’s why we’ve gotten better with that over the last couple of weeks finishing games.
But those turnovers were tough lessons at the time, but we’ve learned from that to get us here. It’s well worth it.”
