Rick Barnes Transcript 

On what Uros Plavsic can do to return to his production level from a few weeks ago…
“Some of it has been that we played against some teams that have gone all guards. At times there have been four guards and a post player that you can really classify as a guard too, and so we’ve had to size down. When we went big—it happened the other night against Texas A&M—they came out with guards and then we got two quick offensive rebounds and they sized up and we were about to size down at the same time, because we felt like we needed it. So that goes on throughout a game where different lineups will call for different things, but we just need him to continue to bring the energy and the effort that he has up to this point, and he’ll do that. We just need him to play the role that he’s been playing and just know that each game can be determined by sometimes what the other team does as well.”
 
On Victor Bailey Jr. and Justin Powell and how they are settling into the game and how that changes what the team can do…
“It’s a major factor to know what we’re going to get out of each one of those guys. Every night, it changes everything because they both bring two totally different aspects to the game, I mean VJ’s athletic ability and he guards at a very high level and with Justin, again, Justin’s defense has gotten so much better. We just need both of those guys to play to their ability and you said it, do the things that we’ve asked them to do and settle into it and be consistent.”
 
On if he thinks Olivier Nkamhoua is starting to show consistency…
“He is, and you feel like with Olivier, it was only a matter of time and now it’s going to be can he maintain that, and I think he is getting more comfortable. I think he’s starting to understand the game as a whole as opposed to just pieces of it. We’ve told him that for a long time. He’s a guy that every day after practice he is going to stay out there and work on the skills and play one-on-one with certain guys. But in the game, we’ve told him, you’re never going to play one-on-one in a basketball game, because people are going to be coming from here, there, and maybe everywhere, but I think that’s where he’s starting to find out that he’s going to have to be quick in space and in a tight space, no one had those gaps close really quickly. I do think the game is slowing down for him, which I think is a big, big part of basketball. The more you’re out there, the more and it does slow down for you, and we expect to see him to improve with it.”

On if he thinks Tennessee’s offensive performance on Tuesday will give the team more confidence heading on the road this weekend…
“That’s hard because we’ve been there before. Someone asked me that same question after we had a good offensive night and we have followed up with not such a good offensive night. I think our team has been confident, I do, I think that some of it has been we’ve had some young guys, and as you know they’re learning how to settle into their roles that we need them to play and the consistency part of it. I like to think that we’re confident, I think it still goes back to when we take shots when we’re open, we play our best basketball, when we hold on to it and for whatever reason… I wish I could tell you why guys turn down shots. I don’t know, especially ones that they know that’s exactly what they’re supposed to be doing for us. But I like to think that we go into each game with confidence whether or not we’re going to score 80 or 90 points, and I like to see us do that, but so much of it depends on that. One thing for certain, tomorrow we’re playing against a very fast-paced basketball team. They play about as quick as we’d like to play. So, the opportunity to score a lot of points will be there, but yet, you’re talking about two teams that pride themselves on the defensive end as much as they want to score at a high clip and play at a fast pace. They’re going to do everything they possibly can do to keep the other team from doing that. And so sometimes your opponent has a lot to do with how you play offensively, but we just want to be consistent and know that we can play with the way that we practice, and if we can do that, we’ll see how it all unfolds for us.”
 
On what South Carolina has been doing since the teams first met…
“Well, I think a lot like us and like other teams, they’re starting to be able to settle into a rotation. I know their three perimeter players are shooting the ball extremely well. I’ll tell you what, they’ve had big runs in the second half. They’re 2-2-1 zone press that they run, they’ve been able to turn people over and convert that, but in their wins they have had where they’ve come from behind, or it was a close game, or they were leading, they have gone on big, big runs in the second half. And so that’s something that we have to certainly be aware of and we know it. I think they’re playing with confidence, which they should. You guys know my feelings towards Frank Martin and he’s a terrific coach and he’s never going to let his guys not continue to get better and they’ve done just that where they seem to feel really good about where they are with their rotation as a team and guys are into roles they want to be in. Like I said, you can write it down. Every time you play against Frank and his team they’re going to get after you on the defensive end and now they’re really getting some good stuff out of their zone press.”
 
On what mistakes his players make to lead him to take them off the court…
“You know what, I would say this—it’s the kind of mistakes that are made is what I would say first. You know we’re with these guys every day. We know better than people can even imagine and so much of it honestly depends on the way they’re carrying themselves out there and the way that mistake is made. If it was made in a nonchalant way like we might see in practice, we know that through practice that hey, this is getting ready to compound itself. We owe it to our team and our program, but we have win basketball games. We know we’re in possession games every night. I think it gets back to the way we read people and we tell our guys some time you know we don’t want turnovers, but some of them are going to happen. If it happens the way that we’re telling somebody trying to make the right pass, and it gets deflected or something like that, we’re not pulling guys out for that.
 
“It’s when they start doing things on the court that we haven’t seen them doing practice. It could be taking a shot that we haven’t seen in practice, taking a shot is not part of what we what we want to see. It can be not blocking out. The thing that we normally substitute for quickly to get attention is missed block outs, especially when it is a key emphasis in the game, we see a guy not making the effort to do that. We have to get them out and we have to at least get them to understand that this is a big part of our game. When we see somebody in the low post, we tell them before the game. They’re going to double team, we don’t want you to turn and start dribbling the ball, you need to turn and face so you don’t get double-teamed. When they get the ball and do just that, we have to get them out because they’re not in tune with what we’re supposed to be doing as a team, but you know we’re not looking to pull everybody for a mistake just every single time. It’s those that we think where it’s a lack of concentration, a lack of being in tune with what we’re trying to get done from our game plan, whether we’re talking offense or defense, it could be a ball screen missed coverage, it could be a guy that a lot of people might not think is involved in the play, it could be a perimeter guy on the back line. That’s a crucial thing because those guys up on the ball are working hard to do their job and they don’t get help from behind, and they’re looking and that makes it look like they got scored on when in reality it was someone in the back and those are just simple let downs of concentration that you can’t have. And again, it goes back to practice, we know guys and sometimes when they have one, they are prone to put a couple more together, and we want to stop it as quickly as we can.”
 
On what causes his team’s scoring droughts in games…
“We look at almost every game after we come back. Most of the time, it could be a little bit of all that, it could be us not playing with the speed to get where we want to get quickly and speed is not just running the ball down the floor, we’re talking about, you know, not over dribbling the basketball, not being a ball stopper, and getting the ball moving. We’ve had guys turn down shots. There’s no question we’ve had guys turn down shots. Then we’ve had situations where, you know, lack of execution we call a play and one guy doesn’t run it, and it breaks down, it puts you in a scramble mode with your backs up against the clock and then guys might have to force up a shot that you don’t want. So, it’s a combination of a lot of different things. It’s not just one thing but it goes back to, and we’ve said it were in February, we should always know how to execute a play that we call, we should know exactly what we’re looking for in those plays, but you have to give some credit to the other team too. They might not have trap the whole game or done something they could come out and do something different so that goes back to where players have to be alert and know that we try to tell them coming out of every time out. Expect to trap, expect this, and expect that. And we have something for all of that but they’re the ones that have to react to it.”
 
On how much easier the offense is to run when multiple players are scoring…
“It makes a huge difference when we get that. I would imagine those two guys are probably being game planned for, Santi and Kennedy. I would even say throw Zakai in there. There will probably be people concerned about the speed of those guys and talk about that and how they can defend that. And so with that said, we need consistency, and you know Josiah has certainly proven he can score. He played with the level of speed the other night that was really impressive. I mean that layup he made coming down the sideline, one bounce in front of our basket and he got to the rim. Olivier, like we talked earlier, I do think he’s getting more comfortable where the game is slowing down for him, but we needed it. There’s no question we need it from some other guys, not just them. We need what Justin Powell gives us, we need what VJ (Bailey) gets, we need what Jahmai Mashack can give us coming in, because he brings a different twist to the game when he comes in because he has the ability to drive it and get deep against the green of that defense and Brandon (Huntley-Hatfield), we need Brandon. Fulky, I mean think about, at the start the season you would have thought that Fulky would probably have been our leading scorer, but we need him to understand that he’s been in the league a long time and coaches know how to play him and they’re not going to let him do what he wants the way he wants. We’ve talked long and hard about making the adjustment that he needs to make, but we need those other guys to give us some buckets.”
 
On being 3-6 away from home and the difficulty playing on the road…
“Well, the Texas Tech game, we were not very good on offense but had a shot. Just like the Texas game, (potential) game-winner at the buzzer. Kentucky, we never had a shot at that one. I didn’t feel like we ever, after the first two minutes of the Villanova game with Kennedy (Chandler) getting those tough fouls, we were fighting uphill all the way. LSU, I can’t remember what it was like there. Alabama right after Christmas without John (Fulkerson) and Kennedy. But I would say it’s tough to win on the road, anywhere. Neutral sites you would like think it’s a 50/50 toss up, anybody can get those. When you go on the road in conference, winning a conference road game is really hard to do. It’s hard, I mean you look at every league in the country where you go, there’s not a coach at any level, I don’t care what league you’re talking about. I don’t care if they’re going to play the first place team or the last place team, nobody thinks it’s ever going to be easy, they know you want to play well. We have enough respect for the game to know that the other team wants to win just as badly as we do. And so, sometimes it’s more difficult than people might think that when you go on the road. When you’re the visiting team and you have a chance to win the game, you can’t keep throwing lifelines to the home team. Even at home the other night, think about it, we had a chance to maybe put that game away earlier. Not to take anything away from Texas A&M, I mean they kept fighting back. And we threw out some lifelines too with the turnovers that we gave them, the kind you can’t have. So it’s difficult to win whether you’re at home or on the road, but we just have to go fight and play as hard as we can and hope we play good basketball.”
 
 
Sophomore Guard Justin Powell Quotables
 
On his back-to-back threes late in the game against Texas A&M…
“It felt good, especially to hit a couple in a big time. Seeing a couple go in is always a big confidence booster. It was a big part in the game, I think we needed it a little bit and hearing Thompson-Boling go a little crazy after that was definitely something that was fun.”
 
On his level of comfort on both ends of the floor…
“I’m comfortable and every game I’m trying to get more comfortable. I think that goes for everyone right now, everyone is trying to fit into their roles and figure out their roles still. There are always times in different parts of the games where your confidence goes up. Everyone is trying to get more comfortable throughout the year and it’s honestly something that you fight for honestly until the last game.”
 
On games away from home coming down to the wire…
“Especially during SEC play, every possession matters. I think that’s something that starts in practice. You just have to know that every single possession matters and you have to take care of the ball and minimize turnovers. I heard coach say that it’s hard to win on the road, and it is. It’s a hard league and a great league. You just have to go out there every night knowing that you have to be on you’re A-game. Nobody is going to be perfect, but you have to be pretty close to perfect. In the end, you’re just trying to figure out what the best thing is to do to get the win that night.”
 
On Zakai Zeigler’s defense…
“I always tell him all the time and we joke around with him during practice that we would hate playing against him. He’s the one guy who is a little gnat on defense that you just hate playing against, especially for taller guards. He just gets underneath you and he’s so quick and so fast that I tell him that he’s just annoying. I love him to death, but I would hate playing against him on defense if I was on the other team. He just gets underneath you and he knows what to do. He’s like the little brother that won’t go away. He just knows exactly what to do to push your buttons.”

-UT Athletics