Tennessee is moving on in March Madness. Tennessee took a 79-72 victory over Virginia, using an old-school approach. This is now the tenth time in his head coaching career that Rick Barnes has led a team to the Sweet 16, and the fourth straight season at Tennessee.
After the game, Rick Barnes spoke of the mentality of his team, after it was pointed out how long he had been coaching and how few three-pointers that Tennessee shot in the win, per Ben McKee of 247Sports.
“How do I look after all these years? I'll tell you this, deep down inside, I wish there was no three-point line and everything was played at 15 feet of net. I would be a football coach. We would run the single wing or whatever. We would be running three yards in a cloud of dust,” Barnes said. “I don't mind shooting threes with the right guy shooting it, but I believe playing inside out. I still believe there's a great value on putting teams in foul trouble, trying to get to people's benches by doing that.”
Tennessee took 55 attempts from the field, while just 19 of them were from deep. Meanwhile, Virginia took 35 of their 69 field goal attempts from three. Still, the inside-out play style did its job, as Virginia was in foul trouble. Thijs De Ridder, Johann Grunloh, and Chance Mallory all had four fouls in the game. Meanwhile, J.P. Estrella was the only Tennessee player with even three fouls.
“I grew up in an era, wasn't a very good player, but literally, you know this, everything was 15 feet and in. That's what it was. I still believe in it and still believe in hard screening, hard cutting. Sometimes, we probably pick and roll more than I would like,” Barnes continued. “We do it some and sometimes I'm good at it. I like it when I look down and see that we've got 20 assists. I like that. On 26 made baskets. I like to see us sharing the ball and I love teams that are balanced. When we have a guy that can go, you have seen us do it through the years with a bunch of guys. We play their strengths but we love balance. We really do. We love balance.”
Barnes has been coaching since 1977, when he began his career at North State Academy. He would move to the college ranks with Davidson in 1978. Barnes then became a head coach for the first time in 1987-88 with George Mason, and has been a head coach ever since, with stops at Providence, Clemson, Texas, and Tennessee.
Now, he is looking to make it to the Elite Eight, but Iowa State stands in the way on Friday night.
