TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Tennessee basketball earned its first road win of the season Saturday night, outlasting Alabama 79-73 behind standout performances from Nate Ament and Ja’Kobi Gillespie.
Following the game, Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes discussed Nate Ament’s strong performance, finding a way on the road and more. Here’s everything Barnes said.
More From RTI: Three Quick Takeaways As Tennessee Basketball Upsets Alabama On The Road
Opening Statement
“One, great, college basketball game. Both teams played hard, competed the entire time. And they’re really, as you know, a difficult team to guard. And Nate just does a terrific job putting his guys in position to make it hard. And we were trying all kind of things. Ball-screen coverages, just pretty much everything we had. But Felix (Okpara’s) block, there were a lot of big plays, big stops that we had to get. But happy for our guys. Last week was an off week for us and I appreciate we, as a coaching staff, they understood we had to get some things right. They really approached this past week with a great mindset and were able to carry over a lot of what we talked about. And we knew that we were playing one of the best offensive teams in the country and we wanted to be on the edge the entire time. And even with that, they’re a hard team to guard. But I just love the fact that our guys stayed locked in for the most part.”
On the performance of Tennessee’s JP Estrella, getting the start
“Really, again, the team that we started tonight was the team that we thought would be our starting team. It’s the first time — when we put our roster together, this is the team we thought we would start from day one. And I respect the fact that (JP has) had to fight really hard from his injury a year ago to get back, to some other injuries along the way. But I thought he was really locked in. I thought as the game went on — we started switching and we just kept trying to get our post guys to back up as much as we could. And finally, the last part of it, we were able to do that a little bit. He had one great possession trying to guard (Labaron) Philon. But we’re proud of him. He got a big rebound. He knows he should have probably kicked out. Probably should have brought that back out, that’s what we do and. But he played really hard. And he and Felix came up with some big plays there at the end for us and won on the glass.”
On starting to see a more physical JP Estrella, which they’ve been looking for
“It is (good). And again, we know he’s one of the great teammates. We know how much he loves being a Tennessee Volunteer. He’s had some tough breaks in his career. But tonight, all that hard work he put in could be the start of something really good for him. Because we believe in him, we really do. And he earned the right to be in the starting lineup. He did it. And he showed up tonight big and he’s going to have to, along with Felix and everybody, just keep building.”
On Alabama with its least productive game from the 3-point line in terms of makes and attempts
“Well again, they’re so good. You get out there like we were and they can go by you. And they were early. And we still needed a little bit more rim protection. But they’re good. They really shoot a high number at the rim. We just wanted them, if they were going to make a bunch of threes, we wanted it to be at a high-volume number. And we also know that they can get it going at any time and we just didn’t want to give them anything easy. And it’s a very hard team to guard. But we were scrambling around a few times and got back. So again, I just got to give our guys credit for really staying locked into what we were trying to get done as a team from the scouting report standpoint.”
On Nate Ament playing aggressive, balancing it and trying not to be too aggressive
“Nate’s been good all year. I’ve said it from the beginning he’s a guy that is playing a position he’s never played. In high school he’s more of a four or five kind of player. He’s played on the perimeter pretty much exclusively. We’ve gone and got him at the four a couple of times, not very much. But what he’s learning to do, as much as we try to adjust him to the physicality that he was going to see, it’s something that you have to live. And he’s lived it. And I’ve said it before, I don’t think he’s had a great whistle all year. But he’s starting to understand how to attack space and not to get himself in trouble by going too deep. But he was terrific tonight. Again, I think he’s been really good all year. I know that when expectations are high for a player, sometimes people get disappointed.
But we are not one bit disappointed with what he’s done for us all year. He’s gonna keep getting better. It was just a matter of time to where you felt like he would get the flow, the confidence and the vision to see where and how he needed to attack. And he’s done that really — and I really think it started in the Florida game. He’s put, what, four games (together) where I think he really knows where he needs to go to work.”
On how much he believes a win like this can help Tennessee’s mental toughness moving forward
“I think the biggest thing is young guys don’t realize how hard it is to win. And if you go into a game in this league, you have to go in expecting it to be a dog fight right to the very end. If you’re not ready to play, any team in this league can embarrass you. There’s got to be a mindset that you’re going to have to work the game and stay on top of it. And we’ve had some games this year, and I don’t ever want to take (away from a team). When somebody beats us, they beat us. And every coach goes back and looks at it and says, ‘Well, if we’d have done this or that.’ No kidding, but we didn’t do it. Sometimes the opponents have something to do with that, sometimes they’re self-inflicted wounds.
“But I hope that, again, the best part was we had a really hard week this past week, and I really felt that we came out tonight and what we’ve worked on, showed up here tonight. And hopefully it’s something we can build on, but it’s not gonna be easy. It’s never gonna be easy, and I hope they understand that.”
On how important it was for him to see his team close out a game on the road in a hostile environment
“Well, that’s what we’ve talked about, you know? But not just late. I mean, you know, we’ve had some that, most of our losses, we haven’t been able to do that. But we can still be better. We still made some — now we played hard, but we can still be a little bit smarter at the end of the game with some situations. I thought our poise and our demeanor was really good the last four minutes. I thought we listened better, thought we came out of the timeouts on the same page, and tried to get done what we needed to get done.”
On what impact Charles Bediako had for Alabama
“He’s a player we knew coming in from playing in the past, that he could go get those lobs, rebounds, change shots. But, you know, we didn’t do one thing different in terms of our scouting report. We planned all week with Aiden (Sherrell) and those guys being here, and they made the changes they made, we said, ‘nothing’s changing,’ and now we’re going to guard these guys, what we need to do. And obviously personnel, Nate’s always had some guys like that, you know, that are a lob threat, set screens, roll or play behind the basket. And we really didn’t spend a lot of (time). We really didn’t. We just said, even before it was announced he was going to play, we already had the game plan and we didn’t change anything.”
On Jaylen Carey’s injury, an update
“I think he might have hyper-extended it. They told me he was in the back running in case we needed him, but I think that’s what it was. He planted it pretty hard. Pretty good collision right there.”
On what gave him confidence to play Bishop Boswell with two fouls
“I don’t know. I just felt like he’s smart enough and he knows that we need him. Like even, I think he ended up with three or four, you know, three or four fouls. The third one, it was not a very smart foul where that one, but I just felt like we needed to do it because based on what we had done last week, how much time we had spent trying to get some cohesiveness, we just felt like, and the numbers say that too many times guys can’t play with three fouls. I mean, you have to have confidence in him, and we thought he could do it. And those minutes were huge. He came in and he went for a stretch where, I think, he scored what five or seven points where those were, those were big minutes.”
