Rick Barnes Transcript

On the controversial calls and social media backlash after LSU game: 
“I’m aware of it. It was brought to my attention, and all I can tell you is that I have got trust and faith in the SEC office. I know they are going to do their due diligence and look at it. I think they will handle it the way it should be handled, and that’s really all I can say about it. I try to be as honest as I can with you guys, and with a situation like that, all I can do is tell you the protocol I have to go through and truly believe that the SEC will do their due diligence, which I have full confidence that they will.”

On how he views what it takes to be able to close out games effectively: 
“I view it as part of the game. On the road up nine at the end of a game, you are expecting the other team to make a push. There are a lot of things that can come into play there. It can be turnovers, it can be calls here or there, it can be a lot of different things that go into it. But when it got down to it, we had a lead and then gave up an offensive rebound. This time of year, you expect to be in a one-possession game every time you play. The plays that bothered me would be Jordan Bone’s intentional foul and Grant falling out of bounds and then throwing the ball back in, which you should never do, you should take the turnover right there. So, you give four points away in situations like that. You take those plays, and then at the end, we did not defend the ball the way we need to. We had a couple stops when we really had to which I thought was good. When you go back and think about them getting second shots, which they are very good at it. Throughout most of the game, we did a pretty good job of keeping a team that thrives on offensive rebounding off the glass. I don’t think it is anything that I am alarmed about. I want to see us win every game. When we don’t execute the way I think we need to, you learn from it, and we need to look at the things that we need to do to continue to get better. We know we are going to be in games like this the rest of the way; there’s no question about that. We have got to make sure we know how to handle those situations, and we have to do a better job obviously.”

On how he can help Jordan Bowden: 
“That’s a great question, and it’s up to him to do his job. We can’t put everything on certain guys every night, but we need everybody to do their job. Inconsistency is a key word with him and has been a key word throughout his whole career. When he has been at his best is when he is totally locked in on the defensive end, getting out running the lanes like he is capable of, and so I don’t have any question he is going to do that. But we need him to do it right now.”

On what he attributes his team’s assist numbers being down to and if it’s a concern: 
“It’s a concern because we have too many guys holding the ball too long, trying to think they have to make the play when in reality they don’t. Ever since we have been here and been good is when we are all moving the ball and playing together and letting the offense work for it as opposed to guys trying to dribble, dribble, dribble then shoot and that comes mostly from the guards. If they are going to dribble, then at some point in time they have to get fouled. We are probably as low as any team in the league where our guards drive the ball in and get fouled. They choose to raise up and shoot difficult jump shots, and we don’t even want them to do that. We want them to let our offense continue to work but our guards do need to get fouled more and the only way they are going to be able to do that is being more aggressive attacking the basket as opposed to just settling for jump shots.”

On if he’s been in contact with the SEC office:
“I have been in contact with them since the game a couple different times, and I appreciate them and how they’ve talked to me and what we’ve talked about. Like I said, I have full confidence that they’re going to do the right thing; I really do. They understand the situation, and they are as upset about it, as we should be. The fact is they’ll handle it, and then we have to get ready to play another game.”

On the explanation given for why you can’t call a timeout during a live ball:
“The scrums out in the middle of the floor when four, five or six guys are on the floor trying to come up with a loose ball, and all at once, the coach way down the floor calls a time out, the referee there blows his whistle not even knowing if his team has the ball. That, I think, is the real reason it was put in, and the fact of the matter is I don’t think coaches should be able to call timeout in that situation, but I do think that you should be allowed to call timeouts. I think we put referees in tough positions. I think one thing we have to do to continue to improve our game is do everything we can to help referees do a very difficult job. If I’m trying to yell at a player to call timeout or something and if I don’t get it, they hear it and they call timeout then everybody looks at them saying, ‘Well no player called it.’ Well they were expecting the guy to do it. I just don’t think the rule makes sense. At the end of the game or anytime, we should be able to call timeouts, except when there’s a scrum in the middle of the floor and don’t know who has the ball. But that’s the reason I think it was put in.”

On their on-ball coverage: 
“Again, we got away from the coverage that we were doing and the post guys came up and didn’t make coverage. But it goes back to our guard; we tell them all year long, ‘You guard the ball until you hear the coverage called.’ They’ve got to have their head on a swivel looking at it, because nowadays so many teams just slip screen they don’t even set a screen. If you start jumping from one side or the other, you start giving up lanes to the basket and the first rule of basketball is you have to guard your man. We were allowing them to get down in the lane. and then we were really wanting to shrink the floor. We did a good job for the most part, but we started spreading out at the end of the game. We have to get better there, and we have talked about that all year. We have gotten better, we just have to be more consistent.”

On the final play of the game when Grant fouled:
“Well my thought is that’s a tough way to end a basketball game. I’d hate to see it happen to anybody. People are going to say if it’s a foul early in the game it’s a foul late in the game. I could go back and point out different situations where I said, ‘If that contact was called, this contact should have been called.’ What you want is consistency. I don’t think there’s any question, in terms of officiating, officiating nationwide is trending in the right direction. In terms of people that are really involved with officiating are really trying to get it right, I do believe that. Do we have a ways to go? We do. It was a tough way to end a game and watch somebody go shoot two free throws with 0.6 on the clock.”

On the difficulty of guarding LSU’s dribble penetration:
“Again, it’s hard for anybody to guard the ball. We’ve got guys that I think are more than capable that can do that, but then you’ve got to have help from your teammates. I can tell you our post guys, a couple times, didn’t help them out the way that they needed to, but I do think it’s a real challenge for our guards to understand that they have to work hard at staying in front of the ball. Everybody tries to beat you off the dribble, that’s part of the game. It’s just going to happen. It’s not going to be perfect, but you have to win those more than you lose them because when you start getting beat off the dribble and start helping, now you’ve opened up chances for teams to get to the glass to rebound it and this and that. Some of the situations, it was some guys getting beat off the dribble when they shouldn’t have and others were when the coverage wasn’t right and they got beat that way.”

On why they’ve been fouling more the past few games:
“I can tell you this, I don’t think we’ve changed. I don’t think we’re playing any different. We talk about not fouling, so I can’t answer that question. We have not talked about starting to foul more. I guess we’d have to say that teams are trying to make us foul, which you go into a game and know they’re going to try to put fouls on Grant Williams and Admiral Schofield and maybe even a Jordan Bone. Kyle Alexander has gotten into some foul trouble, and I could defend him in a lot of ways where I don’t think he’s gotten a great whistle. Has it affected him? We’ve talked about it so it has. But as a team overall, we have not changed the way we’ve played all year long, so I don’t know how to answer that question because I know that it’s a big discrepancy. I’m scratching my head over it too to be quite honest with you.”

On if the hook and hold rule has been called consistently:
“I think that if referees do what they’re told I don’t think they’ll have a problem, I don’t. They go over there, they look and some guys look at calls they look at fouls. Again, I don’t know how it all works. But the call has to be made, and they can’t be afraid. If an ejection is warranted, you have to eject somebody, you have to. You just have to officiate the rules. I think that JD Collins, Mark Whitehead and the people that work with the officials day in and day out, that’s what they want. They want consistency, they want them to officiate the rules of the game. Now that they have the chance to go over and look at all those things, you would have to think that they can get it right. Whether they do or they don’t, who’s subject to it? I mean a rule is a rule, and they know what the rule is and now they just have to get it right. If there are three guys looking at it or two, I don’t know what the discussion is or whether it’s a flagrant one, two. I don’t know how that discussion plays out.”

On also being weary of other petty fouls that could happen in a close game:
“Lamonte Turner and Jordan Bone were starting to settle for things when they should take the ball to the basket. We had enough time to do that, and we couldn’t do that. You don’t want players coming down the floor thinking, ‘Okay, I’m just going to bring it up here and raise up for a three.’ You want to be more aggressive than that. You can’t fault Grant. You’re playing it out, you play to win. It’s just a natural reaction that’s what that is. I don’t want people to think that we’re blaming officials for anything. Like I said, the SEC will do their due diligence on what they think. We’ve got to worry about what we have to do to be the team we want to be and make the plays when we want to make them and learn from it. You know what, we’re pretty much in the same situation we were a year ago right now coming down the stretch. We just have to worry about our next game. We’re playing a team that’s had a great year, a team that’s fast, a team that has the leading scorer in the league, and another one is playing great. We’ve got to get ready to play and move on. We’ve got a lot of respect for Ole Miss and what they’re doing and the year they’ve had. That’s where our focus has to be.”

On what impresses him most about Ole Miss:
“They’re defending at a very high level. They’re going to change defenses. They like their 1-3-1 zone, and they can change different defenses out of it. They want to see how you can handle that. They play a fast-paced game. What I mean by that is there’s a lot of speed brought to their offense by two terrific guards that have played really good basketball. Kermit’s done a great job of stepping in. With Andy Kennedy, I had so much respect for Andy and what he did. I think Kermit will be the first to tell you that he was able to inherit some good players, and he’s done a terrific job with them. They’re a terrific team; they’re as good as anybody we’ll play. They’ve proven that they can play with anybody in the country.”

On the team’s maturity after a loss:
“I think these guys know that they’ll come in, we’ll look it and do what we have to do. I know this, they want to win and they know it’s not going to be easy. We just have to keep moving forward.”

On how he approaches a player who’s had an off game:
“I think you guys know me well enough. I’m going to be honest with my players. I can say all the things you just said, but I will say too that we have to control the outcome of the game. I know they’re young, I know they’re hearing a lot of stuff that has been said for the last two weeks. I don’t want them thinking about officiating and this and that, because I do know that I’ve got confidence in our officials in our league here. Are they perfect? They’re not. Are some better than others? They are. Can some handle different environments better than others? They absolutely can, but it’s no different than players. I can say the same thing about players, and he can talk about coaches probably, but the fact of the matter is we’ve got to keep our eyes focused on what we have to do as a team and how we’ve got to get better. You don’t ever stop thinking that way until the seasons over with because we can always find ways to improve, and we have to.”

On Kyle Alexander’s second half stretch:
“We’ve talked to Kyle. He’s trying to figure some of this out too, because he’s been in foul trouble. We tell him he’s got to stay aggressive. In his mind he says, ‘I’m aggressive, I seem to pick up fouls’ and I say ‘Well you’ve got to be aggressive without fouling.’ I think a guy that’s in his position often can get caught up in a lot of things that when officials make calls and maybe he’s not the guy that fouled, but it’s hard to officiate this game. I think with him, he’s just got to be aggressive. I think he’s got to be the player that we know he can be in the long run it all works out, it does. But I thought his demeanor has been really good the past two games. I thought he’s gotten back to being the aggressive player we want him to be.”

On the recent events at the Ole Miss campus:
“We were off yesterday, so we weren’t together as a team. One, I really admire and understand those young men because they made it clear that they had no intentions of disrespecting the American flag. It was all about the hate crimes and the fact that they felt like they had to demonstrate, and I admire them for that. That shouldn’t be anywhere. I think the way they’re administration handled that is terrific, and the fact that they were willing to stand up for what they believe in, what we should all believe actually, is a good thing. I don’t know if there’s anything else planned for this week down there, I don’t know. Maybe that was a weekend thing that they had. That’s all I can tell you.”

On if the blocking foul called on Grant Williams could be changed during the review:
“They cannot take that foul off, they can’t. Obviously, the foul should not have been called, but they can’t take the foul off. They can’t.”

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