Rick Barnes credits Brandon Huntley-Hatfield for play against Oscar Tshiebwe

Tennessee took down Kentucky in a hard-fought victory to advance to the SEC Tournament Championship Game. Afterwards, Volunteers coach Rick Barnes credited Tennessee forward Brandon Huntley-Hatfield for his play against Kentucky star Oscar Tshiebwe.

“Brandon is getting better each time out,” stated Barnes. “Again, every play is a huge play. I thought the play of the game, to be honest with you, was Santi’s rebound at the end. That was a big-time play by him.

“Brandon, again, what he did, and our post guys trying to guard Tshiebwe is so difficult because they do so much stuff to get him the ball, and he does a great job of doing his work early. They know what they’re looking for to get it to him. They bring speed at you. When we bog down, it’s really when we stop playing fast really. Both teams were getting up and down the court pretty quickly, but again, just a great team effort by everyone.”

While Huntley-Hatfield’s statistics don’t jump off the screen, his defense against Tshiebwe was prevalent. Brandon Huntley-Hatfield only scored eight points and pulled down six rebounds, but he held the Kentucky star to 13 points and 11 rebounds. Tennessee contained Oscar Tshiebwe, and now their on to the title game.

Rick Barnes on Tennessee defense: ‘We are proud of the fact that they have bought into that.’

Moreover, Rick Barnes couldn’t stop singing the praises of the Tennessee defense after the victory.

“Well, we are — and again, we are proud of the fact that they have bought into that, and that’s what I think — again, I think most teams in the league want — most of the teams certainly want to hang their hat on their defense,” stated Barnes. “I was concerned myself in the first half with Tshiebwe being on the bench because I knew they were going to come out, and they were going to force-feed that ball to him, which they did a good job. We were fighting as hard as we could with as many guys down there. Uroš did as much as he could do.

“Early here today I thought we dodged a couple of bullets because they did have a couple of looks early from the three, and they were able to tighten up. At the end of the game, we came off a couple of shooters that we shouldn’t have there late, but defensively that’s been their most consistent thing that we’ve done all year. And tonight when they were making a run, really basically I said it’s not a play-calling game. This is a players’ game. You guys have it going this far, and you have to keep playing.

“We were able to get loose there with a few back-cut layups and then got to force — Kennedy got downhill one time. Again, the players and our coaching staff, they did a great job getting ready for this”

As you can see, Rick Barnes has Tennessee playing tremendous basketball in the SEC Tournament. The Volunteers take on the Texas A&M Aggies in the SEC Tournament Championship Game on Sunday at 1:00 PM ET.