What Rick Barnes said before Tennessee's game at Syracuse

What head coach Rick Barnes said before practice on Monday, ahead of Tennessee Basketball’s game at Syracuse on Tuesday in the ACC-SEC Challenge at the JMA Wireless Dome:

Scouting a team like Syracuse early in the season

“By now we have enough film, obviously we just came out of a tournament where I think they had the toughest schedule out in Vegas, I mean, three of the hardest games, and they competed extremely high level. Totally different team. And again, I’m impressed with Coach Autrey and what he’s doing, how he’s, again, putting his team together. And they took Houston to overtime and they’re a good basketball team. But they’re getting back just like we have. I’m sure they cleaned up some things, like we had to clean up some things, maybe added a couple things here or there. But I think they are probably going to have a pretty good beat on us and we feel like we’ll probably have a pretty good beat on them. But we’ll still have to make some adjustments as we go through the game.”

Tennessee’s turnover numbers being down against Houston and Kansas

“Well, that’s where we’re trying to get to understanding again, the value of the ball, just with the way we handle it, but shot selection. And we’re going to have to continue to keep getting better there. And we can still improve our shot selection a little bit. Obviously there’ll always be some things in every game you wants to get better, but I do think the mindset’s getting better in terms of realizing that we’re going to try to defend the way we’re capable of. And we weren’t very good in the Kansas game. And got to get back to making sure we’re more consistent there, but we hope we can make the offense work for our defense too.”

What Bishop Boswell did during the offseason to earn his role 

“Just his work ethic. Bishop wants to be good. He’s competitive and he wants to be good. But this spring, after the season was over with, the time that he put into the gym, and even today, he’s probably put more time in than anybody. He’s watching film, doing this, doing that. And I just think it’s a great sign of him continuing to mature at the level that we need him to. And understanding the role that he needs to play. And I’ve said before, it’s not always the most glamorous (role) to buy into, but as he continues to be as consistent as he can in the role that he needs to play, there’s going to be some other things that will obviously start adding to his game on the offensive end.”

The value of using Bishop Boswell as an example for the rest of the Tennessee team with his defensive effort

“Well, you go back to film and just show his effort and the things after games. And not just what he does on the ball, which I think most people look at, is what he does away from the ball too. I mean, to be a complete defensive guy, whether it’s finishing with a rebound, whatever it may be, making plays in the gaps. Just a lot of things that go into it. But his, like our whole team, will get back to consistency. Night in and night. Can guys do what they need to do to help us to continue to grow?” 

How important Players Era was for Jaylen Carey

“Well, I think it’s, again, we know what Jaylen’s capable of doing. But, again, the word consistency, can he stay off the roller coaster? Can he just stay consistent? What we don’t want from any of these guys is you get on a roller coaster, you’re up, you’re down. All coaches are looking for consistency. What can we expect every single night? Can you give us that at a level that we need you to give it to us? And that’s where I think Jaylen is.”

If the second half against Kansas can serve as an eye opener

“Well, I think not the second half, (but) the first half. Our three worst defensive possessions of the year was the start of that game. That’s probably the most disappointing thing. I mean, we didn’t come out doing the things that we’d been building to, and again, the first three possessions were not good defensively and sooner or later. And that’s kind of a little bit of fool’s gold when you are not doing what you need to do and you got a lead. But over time, teams that are as well coached and as good as Kansas, they’re going to, over the 40 minutes, they’re gonna win out if you don’t do the things that we do (in) practice. And we didn’t deserve to win the game because we didn’t do the things that we needed to do from start to finish.”

Nate Ament saying it felt like everyone was in their own world in the second half

“Well if you, again, I thought from the start of the game. Again, I’m telling you, the first three possessions were as about as bad as we’d been defensively all year back-to-back-to-back. And so whether it was the second half for what I just didn’t think we were locked in, and it goes back to the team where that’s leadership where I told the team, I said, I don’t know if last year’s team could have beaten Houston, but I know one thing last year’s team would’ve won the second game against Kansas because they’d (have) had more of a mindset to do what we need to do. 

“And we obviously aren’t there yet in the fact that, I mean, how you can’t follow up the game against Houston, which was a hard fought, physical game. I mean, it’s hard. But everybody was dealing with that third day out there and we just didn’t show the mental toughness to get it done.”

If Tennessee left Vegas thinking it could get the ball inside more

“We felt like they had all — I mean, we spent so much time doing that, and different lineups will do different things. We know our players, we know where we need to get ’em the ball. And now it’s getting the players to understand, as much as we want to try to stop the other team and they’re trying to stop us, but there’s oftentimes that teams just stop themselves. And that goes back to knowing who needs to get the ball, when they get it, knowing the flow of the game. But yeah, I don’t think there’s any question, we feel confident that we’ve got some guys that we get ’em where they need to be and we can get them the ball in there.”

Tennessee guards being able to rebound the basketball in addition to the front court

“Well, the way we try to complement each other defensively and (offensively), the way our system’s kind of set up, we need a team that’s gonna rebound the ball, misses and certainly defensively, we gotta rebound the ball. We have to do that. We need to get fouled more. The games that — the good teams are going to get fouled more. So it all goes hand in hand in terms of what we’re trying to get done, where we’re trying to make one side of the ball affect the other side. But rebounding is so important. I mean, it’s so important. The numbers that we keep, the stats, if you saw ’em, you’d be shocked. When we’re playing well, rebounding has so much to do with it. And again, it goes back to consistency. We’ve gotta get it there and keep it there.”

If he saw the progress he wanted to see during Tennessee’s games in Las Vegas

“Well, I think we played well. The (third) game. We were disappointed we did not have the same mental focus, which cost us a game. And again, I’m not saying that Kansas didn’t beat us, because they did, but every coach goes back after a game. I think every coach’s message probably to their teams are if we do what we’re supposed to do, we could win every game. If all things are equal, which they’re never always equal, but closer than you might think sometimes. But we didn’t do the things that it takes to win a high-level college basketball game against Kansas. So to answer your question, I would say where we building to, we kind of regressed in the third game.”