#3 Tennessee 83, Samford 70 Dec. 19, 2018 | Knoxville, Tenn. | Thompson-Boling Arena

Tennessee Head Coach Rick Barnes

On Jordan Bone: “You know, we sat down yesterday for a while and talked about a lot of different things and went back and reviewed some games to keep trying to help him. He really wants to be a great player, and I think it goes back to him understanding how talented he is and where he’s most effective, working in those areas, and I thought he did a great job of that tonight. I thought he did a great job tonight. He really worked hard. We were trying to go inside early, and he attacked the elbows, got to the basket and made one of the best layups he’s ever made, where he got it up high off the glass. He really played well tonight. We’ve got to continue to get better on ball screen defense, guys getting downhill on us. But he was good, he really was good tonight.”

On controlling the paint: “It’s important and tonight they would have been very happy if we had fallen in love with the three early. We don’t mind shooting it, but that’s what we want to use to break the game open, we need to establish ourselves inside, and that’s what important. We knew we wanted to try to get to their bench and put fouls on their interior defense. And when you put Guerrero and Sharkey out there on that ball screen, it’s hard because Sharkey is really shifty and can get down the lane, and put a lot of pressure on your defense. On the other end we wanted to make those two guys guard by running our transition game because it’s setup where it puts a lot of pressure on their point guard and put pressure on their interior.”

On talking to Bowden: “Mostly talking about what his strengths are and talking about what he’s capable of doing night in and night out, and doing what he can control. We talked about understanding where he needed to play with the ball, where he needed to put the ball, and he has gotten better with that. But even tonight he got the ball knocked away from him, some of that’s he played long, and that’s really respecting the game, and knowing that anyone’s capable of taking the ball away from you if you’re sloppy with it. And at the end there we were, he just threw the ball away for no reason. But the biggest part is just knowing where he’s most effective, and just trying to play to those areas.”

On John Fulkerson’s status: “I think he’ll be ready. We could have played him tonight. He said that to us. He said, ‘if you guys need me, I’ll do it.’ He doesn’t have a clue what happened. He had a really good practice a couple of days ago and he came in two days ago and said ‘I don’t know why, but I’m having a hard time raising my arm. But he told us if we needed him, he would do whatever he needed to do to help the team. I thought Derrick came in and gave us some solid minutes. He picked up some fouls that were not all his fault because the perimeter defense breaking down put the pressure on that front line.”

On Penny Hardaway’s comments: “You guys know me, and I’ll tell you what I will talk about is Samford. I think Samford has a heck of a team, and I told our team that we beat a heck of a team tonight. I have a lot of respect for coach Padgett and what he did. I coached against him when I was at Clemson. I think about that team tonight, and I think about three guys that left their program. One is starting at NC State, one is starting at Louisville and one is at Arizona State. I think about the program that they’ve built there. We told our team yesterday that if we think we’re going to play pretty today and get a win, we’ll find our real quickly that we’re not. So we responded and got a win over a really good basketball team.”

On playing shorthanded: “You worry about it before the game, but we knew that they were going to play a lot of zone, we knew that. I think we played the entire game where we knew that was going to happen. So we knew the game would be a little bit slower. We played a little bit of zone early, because Grant picked up two fouls where he has to stop leaving his feet. But yet, the perimeter guys are putting that pressure on our front line guys. We worked hard at practice the other day, we spent two days trying to guard the ball better. The way teams play today they put their head down trying to get downhill. Josh Sharkey is a good basketball player and he really does a great job. He’s responsible for 40 percent of their offense. Admiral has been a real warrior. Staying out there and playing 38 minutes is hard to do. Yet you look at his numbers, and he had four or five steals and really did a good job with that. Grant has to more. He got himself in foul trouble in the first half. Kyle tonight was not as effective and I thought he should have been."

On Yves’ contributions tonight: “He got extra possessions and he altered shots. But again, he still has to be a little more confident with the ball, like the one he threw away in the backcourt. He threw a bad pass to Kyle, and we got lucky in the time during the game where he can’t make that pass. Kyle was on the move down the lane. He’s got to stop passing the ball from down by his hip. It’s like a quarterback who throws it and it sails on him. His passes sail on him because he doesn’t get it up over his head.”

On injuries and being banged up: “John Fulkerson will be really good to go. Lamonté Turner, you all have seen him practice, so the doctors have pretty much told him that he needs to work his way back in there, but mentally he has to feel like he can do that. We are banged up, but you go back and look we’ve found different ways to win every single night. We’ve shown that we can put different guys in double figures, and we really don’t have to rely on one single guy. But, I do think that Admiral has been a mainstay for us these last couple weeks because he’s done a lot. He’s really done a lot to keep us together.”

On Jalen Johnson’s contributions: “Jalen needs playing time but he needs to figure like what we were talking about with Jordan Bone. He dribbles himself into trouble when he shouldn’t. He made a great pass into the post tonight that picked up one of the fouls onto Grant early in the first half. That’s his biggest problem. Defensively, it’s about the details. It’s like we tell anybody, Derrick included. If you want minutes, we don’t need you thinking about scoring. We need them to let the offense do that for them. What we need them to do is play defense and take care of the ball. But the more he plays, the more we’re not afraid to put him out there. He has shown that he can help us.”

Tennessee Guard Jordan Bone

On his performance tonight: “It felt amazing. That is the ultimate goal for me being a point guard, making it a lot easier for my teammates and getting them going. So, it definitely felt good to have a career high in assists.”

On controlling the paint: “It is just knowing the flow of the game and taking what the defense gives us and playing inside-out. A lot of teams seem to struggle with that, so we are just going to continue to play our game.”

On when he knows he is in command of the game: “Honestly, you do not know. I went into this game thinking I was going to be aggressive, and I am going to own my spots on the court. We talked about it after practice. I have spots on the court just as much as everybody else. I have to attack those elbows, and it opens up a lot for me as well as my teammates, so being aggressive was my key going into this game.”

Tennessee Forward Grant Williams

On what he thought of Jordan Bone tonight: “Jordan Bone has been aggressive, and he did a good job of guarding Josh Sharkey, especially in the second half. He got into him. Josh is a talented player, and he’s one of my good friends. We joked about it after the game. Bone was aggressive tonight. He got to the elbows. He got to the hole a lot, made nice floaters and layups and a nice little pull- up towards the end. That’s the Bone that we love, and that’s the Bone we expect every night.”

On Tennessee having 52 points in the paint: “We just knew we won it. They were playing a zone, and typically zone teams want you to shoot a lot of threes and take a lot of outside shots. We knew that we wanted to be aggressive and push the ball in transition and also do what we do. We want to pound you inside, and we did a good job of both feeding the post and also driving the ball. The guards did a good job of attacking the zone off closeouts, and Jordan Bowden, Jordan Bone, Yves Pons and those guys cut and had a lot of easy layups.”

On the difference he sees in Jordan Bone: “There’s was a lot of mental Jordan Bone in the beginning, and he’s done a better job of toughening up in that aspect of learning the game. All of us have a long ways to go in that aspect. We know we’re not there yet, but we know that he’s going to do a good job of continuing to grow and that’s something we all have to do on the team. Tonight, you had guys step up. Jordan Bowden hit a lot of good threes for us. Bone and Admiral hit some tough shots. Kyle did a good job. They had one play where not a lot of people appreciate it that he caught a ball through traffic. He got fouled and put a fourth foul on a dude that was significant to them. That was really doing a good job of rebounding for them. Those are things that you take for granted but those things you have to pay attention to.”

Samford Head Coach Scott Padgett

On the team’s tempo in the first half: “I felt like the tempo was how we wanted to play, and they turned up the defense a little. They called a timeout, and whatever he said to them, they came out playing a little harder. Instead of working harder to get a good shot, we settled for some quick jumpers, and they got in transition.”

On Tennessee’s tempo: “That is what is scary about them. I do not think there is a tempo that they cannot play at. They share the ball. They do not care who gets the bucket. They obviously have two big time go-to players, but there are other guys that can go score the ball too.”

On Jordan Bone’s performance: “With him and Yves Pons, we were telling them we are closing three feet below them and putting them in a dare-you-to-shoot situation. With those two guys, we did not want them to beat us off the bounce and then all of a sudden the ball is moving. Those guys start the ball movement, and it always ends up in or Grant Williams’ hands.”

On Tennessee’s weakness: “Normally, you watch a film on a team, and in a half, you find a glaring weakness. I watched five films. Is shooting not their biggest weakness? Sure, but they have guys that can shoot it. I do not think they have a weakness. They compete. For them to come out this close to Christmas off two big wins, I thought they played hard.”