Barnes frustrated by Vols’ effort
KNOXVILLE — How the Tennessee men’s basketball team practiced the two days leading into Wednesday night’s visit from Vanderbilt didn’t forecast what happened once the game tipped off.
The energy and focus Rick Barnes saw Monday and Tuesday didn’t translate, and it provided the second-year coach an opportunity to provide a blunt assessment of the Volunteers’ toughness.
“You have teams sometimes that they’ll compete in practice, but when the lights come on, then you really find out about it,” Barnes said after Tennessee’s 67-56 loss to the Commodores. “When the lights came on tonight, we didn’t compete. We didn’t play hard enough for 40 minutes to win this game. You guys saw it.
“There was a big difference in the second half and the first half, and that’s effort, it’s intensity, it’s focus. We’ve got three games left, and we’ve got to see what we can do. But we’ve got to have more of an effort for 40 minutes. I don’t know if we’ve had but a couple of games where we’ve played for 40 minutes. We still play (well) in spots. But we haven’t figured out yet how to be tough enough to play for 40 minutes.”
An awful opening 20 minutes set the tone for a disheartening home loss for a team fighting for its NCAA tournament life. Tennessee fell behind 18-4 and scored its fewest points in any half in more than two seasons. Though the Vols cut their deficit to one point twice in the second half, the die was cast by a poor start neither Barnes nor his players could explain.
“We practice hard every day. We get after each other every day,” guard Shembari Phillips said. “We’ve just got to — I mean, I can’t really put a finger on what happened today as far as why we came out so flat, but in practice we get after it and we take care of what we’ve got to do. We’ve just got to do a better job of translating.”
Tennessee shot just 1-of-11 to open the game and made only six shots — Admiral Schofield, the only Vol to show obvious energy in a lifeless first half, made three of them — in the entire first half.
Vanderbilt countered Tennessee’s inside-out offense by sending another defender to double-team Grant Williams and Schofield in the post, and 7-footer Luke Kornet blocked seven shots and altered several more when the Vols attacked the rim. The trio of Williams, Schofield and Robert Hubbs, so crucial to the Vols’ success, combined to shoot 12-of-32 from the field.
“They were willing to switch and let Robert Hubbs be one on one in the post against their point guard,” Barnes complained, “and we didn’t throw it in there one time when we should have been one pass and (throw) the ball in there to him. They weren’t double-teaming Robert really. That’s a lack of not being focused, but also not demanding the ball. I’d like for them to do that every time, and we didn’t take advantage of it.”
The two-man platoon at point guard of Jordan Bone and Lamonte Turner was so ineffective Barnes turned to freshman Kwe Parker for 14 second-half minutes after he played a total of 19 minutes the past seven games. After halftime, Turner played just seven minutes and Bone one. Why?
“Effort. Intensity. Wanting to compete and just competing,” Barnes explained. He clarified that Turner “tried to compete” but did not hide his frustration with Bone.
“All we’re asking Jordan Bone to do is to use his speed, and he’s refusing to do that,” he said. “Defensively he’s got to get better, and we know that like most freshmen. But he’s got to give us the effort to do that.”
Tennessee’s improved effort in the second half wasn’t enough to undo the early damage.
“It’s more disappointing because we know we’re nobody, and we’ve got to come out and we’ve got to play like that,” Schofield said. “We’ve got to play with fire, and we just didn’t play with fire. That’s the biggest thing about us. We’ve got to come out and we’ve got to play with energy and we’ve got to play with a chip on our shoulder.”