‘Tough love’ has fueled Vols’ run to the Elite 8

DETROIT — In the afterglow of his biggest victory yet as Tennessee’s basketball coach, Rick Barnes wanted to talk about a loss.

And not just any defeat. He brought up the Vols’ worst performance of the season.

“The loss in the SEC tournament helped us,” Barnes surmised after beating Creighton 82-75 on Friday night to earn his first Elite Eight appearance with the Vols.

Win Sunday against top-seeded Purdue and star Zach Edey — a big man and a big if for Tennessee — and Barnes’ team will have done something no Vols ever have: reach a Final Four.

That Tennessee (27-8) is one game from program history isn’t surprising. Look around the bracket in this second weekend of the NCAA tournament. You see Illinois.

Tennessee beat Illinois. Beat NC State, too. And Alabama twice.

Winning ways from the regular season haven’t usually carried into the NCAA tournament under Barnes. This time in the Sweet 16, though, was different. The Creighton game was another example of Tennessee playing well when it mattered most, making big shots offensively and big stops defensively, having the composure and experience to withstand a Bluejays rally and hold on in the final moments.

Friday night, as much of this season, the Vols looked like a Final Four-caliber team.

But that afternoon at Bridgestone Arena two weeks ago — the one Barnes mentioned unsolicited — was a rare instance in which they didn’t. They were awful on March 15 at the SEC tournament, losing 73-56 to Mississippi State, and the score should have been worse.

Often, a loss like that in a conference tournament can be useful for an elite team in an NCAA tournament.

And looking back, the Vols agree that it was.

“A blessing in disguise,” Josiah-jordan James said. “It lit a fire under us.”

Above all, that loss gave the Vols an excuse to get real with one another. “Tough love” is how Jahmai Mashack put it. After the Mississippi State game, he said, the players held a meeting and threw out some “brutal honesty.” They called out things. They said what wasn’t being said to teammates, and they haven’t stopped. And it’s fueling a hungry team embarking on this March Madness

run.

“When guys aren’t doing their job: ‘Coach, get them out,’ ” James said. “It’s not about your feelings. That’s the biggest thing that we’ve been trying to preach.”

“I think sometimes we were a little bit hesitant to say how we really felt about the game,” Mashack said. “But I think the thing that really brought us to that next level is really having that tough love with each other, being able to tell each other, ‘Yo, you messed up on that play,’ or ‘You weren’t where you were supposed to be,’ or ‘You didn’t box out.’ ”

That has changed for the Vols in these past two weeks.

And it’s why their coach brought up the Mississippi State game on Friday night.

“After the SEC tournament,” Barnes said, “they have done just an incredible job of getting after each other and holding each other to a higher level, a higher standard.

“I think I do my job getting after them, but it’s a whole lot easier when they start getting at each other . . . . When you get teams that care that much and can take coaching from each other, it’s a good thing.”

In a hallway outside the locker room at Little Caesars Arena, Tennessee’s band passed a trio of players heading to a news conference after the victory.

Loud cheers erupted, and at the front of the group was Barnes, a bright smile on his face. Little moments like these have become commonplace for the Vols the past two weeks.

Feels different. The Vols are actually having fun in March. They are nearing something special in a tournament that has caused them so much grief in recent years.

In each of the past two games, as happens in NCAA tournament games, Tennessee was presented with tests of character that might have proved too much in previous postseasons. But in this one, “When Creighton made that run,” James said, “we didn’t splinter.” He’s right. This isn’t the same. Something is different.

It’s strange to think, after all the success of the regular season, it took an embarrassing loss in Nashville for Tennessee to discover that difference.

But three victories later, here they are.

Thanks, Mississippi State.

“It definitely got us more in line that we could be bounced just like that,” Dalton Knecht said. “. . . It definitely got us ready for March. We don’t want that same feeling we had after that game.”

Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @Gentry_estes.