Thompson-Boling Arena

#16 Tennessee 66, Georgia 61 March 3, 2018 | Knoxville, Tenn. | Thompson-Boling Arena Tennessee Head Coach Rick Barnes On slowing down Georgia’s offense in the second half: “I thought Georgia was terrific in the first half, I told our team at halftime the I thought we guarded well. This was just a great college basketball game. I thought both teams played their hearts out. They normally average about seven threes a game, but they made six in the first half and I thought some of them were tough shots. But I just said, ‘it’s not going to be easy, it’s not supposed to be easy’ and we stayed with it. In the second half, I do think that our full court pressure helped us turn them over a little bit, and I think we scored off of most of those turnovers. But this is really what March is about, battling every possession, physical game. We rebounded the ball better when we needed to and when we needed stops we were able to get them.” On what was different down the stretch in this game as opposed to the loss to Georgia two weeks ago: “Well we did get out-toughed down there. And that’s what we told our guys. They knew what they were playing for, and I really did talk about that at some point, we need to break through and beat Georgia. We hadn’t done it since I’d been here, so we talked a lot about that and we talked about why we had been out-toughed. We said that we have to take away those baskets as much as possible. And Yante Maten is such a terrific player. You have to love him and respect every thing about him. I think Mark Fox is a great basketball coach, his teams are hard to play against, they play high percentage basketball, and we knew it going to be tough. We knew it would be. But I think the difference was we were much tougher in the last seven or eight minutes then we were down in Athens.” On going from missing postseason play a year ago to winning the conference: “I think it’s a compliment to our players. We came back from the SEC Tournament last year and we knew we had to make some changes in the program. We knew the first thing that we were going to have to do was get a group of guys that were totally bought in and had two feet firmly planted in the program. We came back and had the hardest spring we’ve had since I’ve been here. We spent time on the track running, and we did things that I haven’t done in 15 years as a coach, because we were going to find out who really wanted to be a part of this because we feel like this is a great opportunity to be a part of. We expect to win and we expect to be playing in March, and I told them you know what, if we’re not going to be on the court, I’m going to let you know what it’s like to be playing in March. We’re going to work. You don’t ever want to be on spring break if you’re a basketball player. Because if you are, that means you aren’t in postseason play. So when we got back from the SEC Tournament and there were about two weeks left of basketball season, I told our guys that we needed to understand that we wanted to be playing at that time next year. So then we broke, had a good spring, came back in the summer, it was good. The trip to Europe helped us a lot, there’s no doubt about it. We started the season and knew we were going to be played a very demanding schedule again, we knew that. And there was a time when we got going where guys got worried about winning, but we just talked about that if we played the way that we were capable of playing, the wins will take care of themselves. But we’ve gone through some uncharted areas with these guys, they’ve learned how to compete with a number in front of their name because of the ranking. We’ve always said over the last few weeks of the season that the conference race wasn’t over, and we’ll keep playing, get better and see how it plays out. It was tough in here against Florida, but we found a way to win. We knew that sweep through Mississippi was going to be a tough one, and then we obviously don’t do anything without beating Georgia. I told our coaches, if you look at our teams that we had to play twice, it was 10 games. I made the comment to them back before the season started that if we really want to be a contender, we have to find a way to go 8-2 against those teams. We ended up going 9-1. Those 10 games were really important on our schedule, and with all the teams we play, those are really important. The fact that we were able to go 9-1 is in itself a great accomplishment and the reason we are where we are right now." On Admiral Schofield having a big second half: “He’s an emotional player, you know he is. He’s a junior, he’s put his work in, and I know people work hard, but I’m concerned about us, and I want guys to work. This time of the year, you have to measure it up pretty carefully. I’m a rhythm coach, I want our team to stay in rhythm. I remember the break at Christmas, that’s a tough time because the schedules change, and I found out a lot about this group. We’d go through a period where we would have a day off, and then we weren’t very good in practice. Over the last couple weeks, we’ve been better, and one day they complained about how hard we went, and I said, ‘If you guys want to be pros, your body is supposed to be sore at this time of year.’ From that point on, we’ve had pretty intense practices; shorter but to the point. I know a group of these guys got together one night and had a great meeting, I think that’s helped our team in a positive way. So, there’s been a lot of growth in our team, and Admiral has probably grown as much as anybody since he has been here, in a lot of different areas.” On this game being a fitting Tennessee win: “Again, I can’t tell you how much respect I have for Mark Fox and his team. They play high percentage basketball, so we knew it was going to be tough. But I thought our guys were locked in, even in the first half, I thought we played good basketball. And I thought they were terrific. I walked off the floor at halftime thinking we didn’t play bad, they were just really really good. But I told our guys we had to grind it out, that’s what we do, that’s the kind of team we are. We knew we were going to stay under pressure, we wanted to keep trying to run, and all that. And in the last six, seven, eight minutes we got into a possession game, and I thought for the most part, to be honest with you, guys have to make plays. And we had some guys make some plays.” On what he told the team heading into the game: “It’s a basketball game. All of these players prepare the same way. They know what they’re playing for, you guys made sure of that. If you want to be a team that’s there every year, you want to be in this position and it’s not easy to win championships. We have a process we have to go through, and we went through it again last night. We didn’t change anything from the last game to this game, but we talked about what we have for the last three weeks. I actually said to them, ‘If you want to be a champion, you have to win now. You can’t give one away, so if we’re going to lose, let’s make sure somebody beats us.’ And they got locked in, and if you go back to the Florida game, I thought it was a hard played game and then Ole Miss was sloppy, but we found a way to get it done, and they had a great effort at Mississippi State. Today, that was a great college basketball game. It’s sad that somebody had to lose, but I just love the way our guys fought there at the end and got it done. You have to give the players credit. They fought and they were the ones that said, ‘Hey, you got to make plays on both ends of the court, you got to go get it and make the plays.’ And we had different guys doing it.” On the atmosphere in Thompson-Boling Arena tonight: “It was unbelievable. We were going to try to take that clock down lower, and we got the ball to Admiral probably 10 seconds before we wanted to, and then, I even told them to enter back towards midcourt and keep dribbling, but it was so loud they couldn’t hear.

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