What Barnes wants to see from freshman Burns

KNOXVILLE — Life is moving quickly these days for D.J. Burns.

The Vols basketball freshman committed two weeks ago, arrived on campus a week later and now has completed his first few workouts at Tennessee.

It’s all happened quickly, Burns said, but it has been a lot of fun all the while.

“It’s been great,” Burns said Thursday in his first interview as a Vol. “It’s a lot of fun being here. It’s been an interesting adjustment to the shift in the pace of everything.

“But I’m catching on and I’ve enjoyed it.”

The 6-foot-9 Burns committed to UT on June 1, but he said the decision was made in his mind two or three weeks before then. He went over it many times in his head, with family and people around him. But he knew Tennessee was the place for him, and since he arrived days later has seen that feeling only confirmed.

The work, however, is only getting started. Burns pegged the first workout at Tennessee as the hardest he had ever done, while the pace of the workouts had been his greatest adjustment.

“He is going to have to get himself in the kind of shape it takes to play at this level – both physically and mentally,” Vols coach Rick Barnes said. “It’s a rude awakening for him. He will tell you that. It’s going to be – these next couple months are going to be really important to him. He is going to see the change, and I think he’s going to understand why he’s doing what he’s having to do.”

Burns said Thursday he is down to 270 pounds – he is listed on the official roster at 280 – and he will keep dropping until he’s told to stop. Conditioning will be an early hurdle for the talented freshman, who reclassified from the 2019 class to the 2018 class in May.

He said the decision came from having already taken a college course while at Rock Hill (S.C.) York Academy and having the necessary credits completed. He jumped at the chance to come in and start working at the next level – even though Barnes said it’s going to be a challenge for the highest-rated recruit he has signed at Tennessee.

“Our guys probably said he will find out it’s going to get a lot harder as we continue to build,” Barnes said. “This is a whole new experience for him. I think it was a really wise choice on his part to reclassify and move up and get started because if he stayed where he was, it probably would have kept him there for another year. It gives him a year to where he is going to be able to really get going on it.”