THE MODERATOR: We welcome Rick Barnes, head coach of Tennessee, to the stage.
RICK BARNES: I'm ready. Go ahead.
THE MODERATOR: We'll take questions.
Q. It will be strange seeing you guys without Zakai at the point, but what does Ja'Kobi bring to this team? Why was he the right fit for you guys?
RICK BARNES: We always had our eyes on Ja'Kobi. The year he left Belmont to go to Maryland, with Zakai coming back, it was a really hard sell for us to try to convince him.
We're excited because he brings a lot. I mean, are they similar in some ways? The biggest way is their competitiveness. Both of them are highly competitive. They're not going to back down. They both play the position differently.
I think I would have loved to have those two guys together. I will tell you that.
We're excited Ja'Kobi has come in. His durability is very similar to Zakai. He never wants to take himself out. He wants to go every rep in practice. He probably has put in more mileage than anybody. That would have been the same with Zakai. We're lucky to have him. We're blessed to have him because he's better than I thought. The more I'm with him, the more I realize that he's just going to continue to get better throughout the year.
Q. There's been a lot of talk about expanding the NCAA tournament. In your opinion, is there a right number of participants?
RICK BARNES: I don't know what the number is. I think it's awfully hard to ask a champion to win more than six games at the level that you go. That would be my biggest concern.
I understand allowing people to play into it, do that. I just don't know a team that has fought hard, No. 1, 2, all those seeds, to ask them to go more than six games. That would be my biggest concern.
What number it would be to get there? I don't know where you ever cut it off. For as long as I've been in it, it's been one or two teams. First team out, didn't go beyond it. Now it's three or four.
I don't know what the number is. I just don't see it ever going beyond three weeks either. It's hard on the teams that play in, have to rush somewhere to get somewhere the next day. That doesn't seem like a fun experience either.
You'd like to think that teams that do get there, they can look back on that experience as being one of the greatest experiences of their life being a part of.
With that said, I don't know. I don't. I just know that, again, I don't think the champion should have to play more than six games.
Q. What makes Nate unique amongst five-star recruits you've coached?
RICK BARNES: What he has similar with most all those guys, or all those guys, would be his humility. He's come in with the attitude he needs to get better, blend in with the guys on the team. He certainly has a great respect for his teammates. They have a great respect for him because they see how diligent he goes about his job every day.
He's going to work hard, whether it's in the weight room, whatever he's got to do, he's going to do it at a max ability. I think his teammates respect that a great deal.
Nate is playing a different position than he ever really played. We kept him exclusively on the outside right now because of our front line depth. He's learning to do things at a level that he's never had to, which is not unique to freshmen coming in, knowing how to go from one play to the next play, sustain it, turn and go the other way quicker than he ever has.
We're more than pleased with him because of his humility and how hard he works.
Q. You played Kentucky three times last season. Could you describe what the preparation is like going into those games?
RICK BARNES: With their zoom action, what they like to run, last year they had a player that was unique, that could bring it down the floor, which you don't see many post players do that.
I think Mark has done a great job getting guys to play the way he wants them to play. Is it a different style? There's a lot of teams that have gone to that spread set like that. Do you have to change a little bit? You do. But that's with everybody. You have to be able to adjust game to game. That's where I think we have an experienced team, they're able to do that a little bit quicker.
The fact is, everything he does, it's difficult to guard.
Q. Is this as versatile a front court as you've had at Tennessee?
RICK BARNES: They're different. They are. I think the versatility is that Cade can swing out and play some perimeter, too, because of his ability to guard. Getting J.P. back. We're still working him back full speed. We needed that the last couple years. Felix has improved. I think his confidence, his leadership, he's taken that to a different level.
Jaylen Carey, he hurt us more than any post player we played against last year. But he's learning to adjust what we're doing, which is different for him. We're excited about that.
Probably the biggest surprise is DeWayne Brown as a freshman coming in. We weren't exactly sure. We knew we wanted DeWayne, no question about that. We wasn't sure how long it would take him to grab ahold of it.
I think with J.P. being out, he had to go up every day pretty much against Felix. It's helped him grow. There's no doubt he'll be a big part of our rotation of five guys.
Q. It's obviously well-known how intense and demanding you are as a coach, wherever your feet are set. Also we've come to know there's a strategy behind when you decide to prank your student-athletes. Have you done anything you'd like to share to your current team this far?
RICK BARNES: I'm always messing with them about something. As you said, we're pretty intense on the court. As soon as it's over with, that's all over with. One of my favorite things, we were doing it last night, in our locker room there's a big round table there where the guys come down and eat. I was sitting there with Cade and some of the other guys last night. They were talking about all the stories around the round table. Certainly missing some of the older guys there.
Anytime they open the door for me to prank them some way, I'm going to get it, jump on it with them. Probably at the time they least expect it.
That's one of my favorite things, to be honest with you, after practice, is going down and hanging out with those guys at dinner in the locker room with them.
Q. (No microphone.)
RICK BARNES: I've done a lot worse than that (smiling). Some I'm not going to talk about...
Q. Yesterday John Calipari talked about leaving the game in a better place for future generations. What do you see right now as the major issue for college basketball? How would you like to see it addressed?
RICK BARNES: Well, I think the game, I think there's terrific coaches, I've said it many times, I've been in it a long time, I haven't coached against anybody that I didn't think was a good basketball coach.
I think the key is we continue to teach the game. We can't let other countries teach it better than us. I think you go way back in the '70s, I remember hearing Dave Gavitt talk about how the European coaches came here, wanted to learn the game, went back and started teaching it better than we did. We got caught up in recruiting and trying to get guys and maybe not coaching them at the level we should have.
I would love to see us someway, somehow improve teaching at a lower level, teaching kids at a very young age the fundamentals of the game. They watch highlights on TV, and it's always dunking the ball or three-point shooting. There's so much of the game that even today our team right now that we're coaching, I've actually said to them a couple times in practice, I would have thought you learned that in junior high. Things that you would expect...
I hope we never get away from wanting to be teachers of the game, the fundamentals of the game of basketball. It's our game. We should be the best at teaching it. I don't want us ever to get away from that.
Q. How much have you seen style of play change, especially in the last five, six seasons?
RICK BARNES: I can take you way back. I've seen it change for really 50 years, from year to year. I remember when everybody ran the UCLA offense 'cause that's what they did. I remember when people ran the reverse action. I remember when everybody ran the flex. Whatever was hot, people would jump on it.
You see guys that watch the NBA, they want to take a play from the NBA. Everybody always talked to me about that. The problem is the NBA has the best players in the world. They pretty much make up the shots.
I think it goes back to, I mean, I've changed throughout the years, but certain things I haven't. We're running an offense now that I've ran for 39 years ago. We put it on the shelf, bring it back. I think there's different things.
You look at your team, you think this might work for this group. You maybe move on to something else. Everybody coaches it different.
I've been blessed to be not -- I thought one of the greatest things that happened to me was I had a chance as an assistant to coach in this league at Alabama for a year, Ohio State for a year. But my first couple years in the Colonial, I learned so much as an assistant watching so many other head coaches do things.
There are really things that we use today. I have a couple special situations I talked about a year ago that I got from Morgan Wootten back in 1980 that we ran at Illinois last year. A lot of situations, stuff I got when I was in college doing a coaching book from studying Dean Smith. We actually worked on some of that yesterday.
I don't know. Whatever you have, whatever you want, you got to adjust it with your players. I think coaches do a good job of that. I think they look at their teams and are able to make those adjustments throughout the year and do those type things.
Q. What's it going to be like competing against Steven Pearl rather than Bruce? Can you put in perspective what Bruce accomplished at Auburn?
RICK BARNES: I think Bruce and I through the years have gotten to know each other really, really well. We share a lot of thoughts on a lot of different things.
Again, I think he did an incredible job at Auburn. But Bruce, everywhere he went, he won. He did a great job when he was at Tennessee. He did it everywhere.
I do know this. Through the years talking to him, I know how much obviously our sons mean to us, but I've watched Steven, too, through the years. Ira Bowman is on that staff. Ira played for me at Providence for a couple years.
I watched Steven. You're not going to be able to sit beside a guy all those years and not get prepared to do what he's getting ready to do.
The time I spent with Wimp Sanderson, Gary Williams, I learned from those guys. You make a mental or a notebook of that. You do that.
I do know that Steven is ready. Bruce has told me that. He knew he would be ready to do it. Again, Bruce knows what ready is as much as anybody. It's a wonderful opportunity for Steven. I think he's ready to take that challenge.
THE MODERATOR: Coach Barnes, thank you for your time today.
RICK BARNES: Thank you, guys.
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