NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - OREGON STATE VS TENNESSEE

March 19, 2021

Rick Barnes

Tennessee Volunteers

Bankers Life Fieldhouse

Postgame Media Conference

Oregon State - 70, Tennessee - 56

THE MODERATOR: We will now begin with an opening statement from head coach Rick Barnes and then go to questions.

RICK BARNES: Congratulations to Oregon State. They played a good basketball game. Just sorry that we didn't give them more competition really. I just told our team it was disappointing in the way that we started out. They had an inside game, and we didn't get a chance -- we didn't do what we have to do to stop that, and we had no inside game. We couldn't.

They were certainly packed back in there daring us to make threes or take shots, and we had some looks, but it didn't go down. Didn't get much on the offensive board the way we needed to, but overall, give them credit for it. Disappointed that I didn't think we played our best basketball. It's hard to play this game when the ball's not going in and when you don't have an inside presence.

Q. Coach, just the first half, did you feel like you guys were playing tight? Did you feel like they were playing timid on the offensive end?

RICK BARNES: I did. I was really surprised, the freshmen especially. They looked like being here in the NCAA Tournament is something they've grown up watching. They were out of character in terms of, yeah, you could tell that they were skittish. There's no doubt about it. They were picking up some fouls there early that hurt us.

We just did some things offensively to start the game where we just weren't synced up together, and, again, I told -- actually, during the time-out, I said, look, we can't be afraid to play basketball now. We've got to play together, stay together. You keep thinking about calling time-outs, but sometimes you feel like the more time-outs you call, the more they tighten up, and you're just hoping they'll get going, get loose, make some shots, but we didn't. Never really got the flow we wanted.

We had opportunities, even at the end. You think about them missing free throws, as bad as we played, we -- the turnovers -- I just all year -- and, Rob, you've seen us play. Some of the ways we turn over the ball just really mystifies me at times. Yeah, there's no doubt at the start of the game that we had guys that were a little bit stage fright, I thought.

Q. Rick, just first off with John, when did you know he wasn't going to be able to go, and how much did that hurt you guys? Secondly, you felt going into this tournament that you knew now what you were going to get from this team, so how surprising was it when in the first five minutes there was kind of just nothing going well?

RICK BARNES: We kept evaluating John up until today, and knowing that he wasn't going to be able to do it, obviously, late last night, this morning. We just felt like it wasn't going to happen.

Really, Mike, thinking about it, I just felt like we played really good basketball. Even though we lost to Alabama, we came into this, but we just didn't have it. I was just -- I'm a little bit surprised, to be quite honest with you. I'm disappointed because I thought we'd gotten by all that. The last couple weeks we'd really been competing hard defensively and doing some things. Then we came out and just got totally out of character.

Some of it with the young guys, did I expect it? Maybe a little bit. I thought maybe, if we could just get them settled down. We talked about it very first time out, look, hey, guys, it's a game. Quit acting like it's something more than it is here. We worked hard to get here. You're here, but getting here is part of it. Now you've got to want to make something out of it. Then we'd come out of the time-out and actually wouldn't execute. Somebody would say, I've got to go make it happen. Just too many guys were in that kind of mindset and just too many guys trying to do too much.

Then defensively, I felt like we weren't moving the way we needed to. I just felt like we needed to be more aggressive to play the kind of defense we normally play. Some of that, what carries over on offense carries over on defense as well.

Q. The offensive struggles seemed to be something that was a factor the second half of the season for this team. You thinking about making offensive changes? What do you got to do over the off-season to get this fixed?

RICK BARNES: We've got to have an inside presence. We've never had some kind of an inside presence. We didn't have any at all today. I'm not talking -- there's different ways to do it. You can drive the ball. There were heavy gaps. They were really in there because they were determined to make us try to -- either try to do too much, turn it over, get in there deep, take tough shots, which we did too many times, and kick out and hope that we weren't making shots.

Again, it's not like we could have anything -- we actually ran a play, executed it, and got a couple blocked, where give them credit for that, where we said, you've got to get it and go up quick. We've got to change -- again, going forward, we've got to get back to having an inside presence the way that we play and the way that we want to play.

Q. Coach, what is the message you have for the fans that felt that this team could be achieving more in the NCAA Tournament that are disappointed from this loss? What's the message that you have for the fans right now?

RICK BARNES: I just told the team, you don't ever take this for granted. I've had more former players text me about they always remember me talking about getting here. It's not an easy thing to do that, and for all that we've been up and down with this year -- I mean, obviously, John Fulkerson has meant a lot to our program. He was a big part of our team coming in.

Yves Pons -- when John goes out, things shift to Yves, where he can't be as effective because he's another guy that's like our secondary guy that we play going inside, but now he gets all eyes on him. And the freshmen, they had their moments, but very inconsistent.

That was the problem with our team. If you look at our team all year, it was the inconsistency, not really knowing from game to game what we were going to get, and that's, if you ask me, the most disappointing thing because, to be a championship caliber team, you've got to be more consistent. You can't turn the ball over the way we did at times, and you've got to be able to rebound, but when you don't have that inside presence, you know, we just -- again, today, I don't think we -- we had a couple offensive rebounds, but not anything what we need to have when you're not shooting the ball the way we were today.

Q. Rick, with Jaden and Keon, when do you expect to start having conversations about their future? Do you expect either of them back next season?

RICK BARNES: I expect they'll do what everybody does now. They'll go through the process. That's what they need to do. They'll go from there, and obviously in the meantime, we'll plan on doing what we have to do with our roster next year.

Q. It may be too soon to answer this with any kind of real perspective, but considering the young talent that you had and the veterans you had coming back and COVID, has this been one of more frustrating seasons for you as a coach?

RICK BARNES: It has been, Rob. The whole thing has been a crazy year, and in some ways, I've said that I admire these guys for what they've had to go through. It's been a difficult year. I think it has been a tough year for the younger guys. I really do believe that.

No one's had a more frustrating year than John Fulkerson. I'll tell you, there's a lot of things that I feel bad about, but maybe none more than him because he had high expectations coming in and he struggled for the major part of the year, not because of any other thing than he -- I mean, he was trying. We know that for us to be where we were, where people thought we'd be, it was based on him having three great weeks at the end of last year when he was playing lights out.

And everyone expected he and Yves Pons to pick right up from there, and everyone had their moments, but it just wasn't consistent enough. The fact that John had the type of year and the way it ended is really a major disappointment for all of us because, again, he's such a great kid and how hard he works at it and what he's meant to Tennessee. It's been a hard year. If I said anything otherwise, it wouldn't be honest. I wouldn't be honest with you.