What Rick Barnes said after No. 9 Tennessee's 77-56 win at LSU

Everything Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes said after the ninth-ranked Vols beat LSU 77-56 on Saturday at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center in Baton Rouge:

Going with a smaller lineup with Uros Plavsic (illness) out

“Yeah, we had made up our minds the last two days. We had tried to go with it. First of all, really proud of our guys. We have a bunch of guys under the weather right now. Santi (Vescovi) was not feeling good. Did very little in practice yesterday and tried. Julian (Phillips) wasn’t feeling great. Obviously got some other guys, Uros, other guys that haven’t felt well. Really proud of them, the way they came in and fought through it. 

“I thought it was good. Early in the game I didn’t think we had any physical presence inside, the way we need it with that lineup. But we should still be able to do it. We certainly got guys that can shoot the ball at all five positions. Defensively, for the most part, did a pretty good job when we got the lead. The last 10 minutes of the game, they pretty much just drove the ball at us and we didn’t do the best of jobs that we need to do.”

Winning two road games this week while dealing with an injury and illness

“I’m proud of these guys, I really am. Simply because we haven’t been able to do a lot of what we like to do in practice with it. These guys, Josiah, we’ve really sort of kind of tried to use the games to get him where he needs to be with his cardio. Today, I thought he did a good job. He came out early … I do think he helps Julian and Santi and  ‘Z’ being on the court, because they’ve played a lot — other than Julian — of basketball together. What I told these guys, we’re a good basketball team right now, but we’ve got to get a lot better. Whatever we need to do, we need to all get better. Coaches have to get better, players have to get better, because there’s a lot of basketball left. We can’t stay pat where we’re at right now.”

Tyreke Key coming off the bench for Tennessee, what he liked about his play at LSU

“I thought he was terrific. Tyreke is one of those guys that has been under the weather. You know what, early in the game, they were out-rebounding us. He and Julian probably changed the rebounding. Tyreke went and got three big offensive rebounds. I thought he took some great, balanced shots. Worked hard defensively. He’ll play more minutes. I probably should’ve put him out there more tonight, too. Santi, I didn’t realize he played as many minutes as he played. Santi really wasn’t feeling well at all. But I’m proud of both Tyreke and Santi because they, again, they both have been sick. Tyreke coming back from being sick last game and not playing at all. Coming back out, I thought he was really good.”

The amount of different lineups Tennessee uses in practice being preparation for games where players are out

“Yeah, I think so. And the fact that we always talk about roles, different lineups. We know there is a lot that can go on throughout a basketball season. Like I’m proud of Jahmai Mashack. I think he’s going to continue to get better and more comfortable out there. But you look at what we have and the way we do practice, we do mix and match it. But one thing is, I go back to preseason, Zakai was normally on what would be the gray team. The first group would probably be the orange team. The gray team is just so competitive because of those guys wanting to compete. We just flip them over a little bit. I have been impressed that for the most part, the growth of Jonas (Aidoo) and Tobe (Awaka). You get Uros back and then you get ‘O’ (Olivier Nkamhoua). Again, I know we need ‘O’ to do more than he did today, and he will. I think all that we’ve gone through throughout the season has given us a chance to play different guys and get them minutes. And we, as a coaching staff, have confidence in every guy we have on our team if they go out and do exactly what we know they’re capable of doing.”

Trying to find a rhythm while Tennessee plays seven first-year coaches over the course of nine games

“I have great respect for coaches. It’s hard. This is a hard — we’re all dealt different hands at different times. I think of the coaches in the league that are new and trying to certainly build programs, the SEC is in great hands with them. We had a big turnover and we have a new wave of coaches coming in and you watch them, there’s so many good schemes going on and it’s really neat watching. My staff does an unbelievably good job of scouting. They spend weeks ahead of time to start getting ready for teams and to try to know what we need to do to help our players. The fact is with our time, like Uros (Plavsic), we were going to make this (starting lineup) change whether he was healthy or not, but he was fine last night and texting all of the coaches wanting to know all of the plays. Wanting to know exactly what he needed to do when he went into the game. That speaks volumes to our players. They want to win and they want to get better. They pull for each other at an extremely high level which is great and I just think again, we keep talking this time of year the more leadership we can get from within and those guys talking and doing things. I thought (Zakai Zeigler) got a little tired today. A couple times at the end when we were in that area where you have to continue to play but also work the game, and we weren’t great on offense, we got deep into the shot clock a little bit. It’s a tough game to manage like that, but every minute he’s out there at the point like that, he’s going to get better. With as much as different situations as he’s going to see, but again, have a very unselfish team. We really do. We’ve got a group of guys that are very unselfish and they’ll come back and we’ll get ready. I can promise you this. They’ll compete against each other every day in practice.”

If he feels Julian Phillips is hitting his stride

“I do. I do. We have to keep him aggressive. He’s got to — first play of the game, we ran something to get him going and he took a not a very good shot to be honest with you. And then a foul he can’t commit that early in the game. Then he came down, his second foul, he grabbed the guy, just wrapped him up. As a group, we’ve got to stop fouling. We don’t want to lose our aggressive on defense, but we’ve got to stop fouling. We foul way too much.”