Rick Barnes reveals Tennessee's needs ahead of next season

Tennessee posted a similar season in ’22-’23 to what they’ve done in other years under Rick Barnes. The Volunteers saw a lot of regular-season success, specifically due to their defense, but, come the postseason, it was a little more of a mixed bag, especially due to their offense.

So, heading into his ninth season in Knoxville, what does Barnes think the Vols need the most? Well, in general, he listed shooting as the program’s main focus. He recognizes that there have already been a few changes but, whether through their additions or how they develop those who come back to Rocky Top, he knows that his team has to find a way to shoot the ball more effectively.

“There’s no doubt that we need to improve our shooting. Not only by recruiting it, which I think we have done that, but also with the guys that we have,” said Barnes. “I have great confidence that these guys are going to do that.”

“I think we’ll be a more athletic team. We’ll be a little bit different, somewhat, upfront. We’ll still add there. But I do know that we shot right around 32%,” added Barnes. “What I told our guys is we just need guys to take the shots within our offense. They’ve got to do that with confidence. That’s part of my job to make sure they know that. But I know that we have improved our perimeter shooting with our recruiting.”

As a team, Tennessee almost made it to 33% from deep this season. Still, Santiago Vescovi was the only one you could necessarily credit as ‘reliable’ as he led the team with 91 makes, 40 more than Zakai Zeigler in second place, on 37% shooting.

In the end, three-point scoring was a very obvious killer for Barnes and the Volunteers. Of their 11 losses on the season, they shot above 30% from distance in only four of them. Overall, the team shot just 30.3% in those losses with an average of only 7.6 three-pointers per defeat.

With that said, Barnes is right that Tennessee has already made some significant additions to right that wrong. First, Vescovi is officially back for a fifth collegiate season. Then, in the transfer portal, they added guard Jordan Gainey who made 2.3 threes per game on 40.8% shooting over two seasons at USC Upstate. After that, if they can develop either BJ Edwards or Jahmai Mashack or return either Josiah-Jordan James or Julian Phillips, they could find enough scoring from three somewhere else on their roster.

Scoring, especially from deep, has plagued Barnes’ tenure in ways and lowered Tennessee’s ceiling when the games truly matter. Even so, he has full belief that the Volunteers have what they require, or will continue to add it however they need to, in order to flip the script on that problem by tipoff next season.