University of Tennessee Athletics
Postgame Quotes: Chattanooga 82, Vols 69
November 11, 2016 | Men's Basketball
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Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes
(Opening statement)
"Like I said coming in it was going to be a real tough opener, which we thought. Wasn’t surprised by anything and I think we got beat by a good basketball team tonight. A lot of things we’re going to learn and take from this game. We need certain guys every night to really play well for us, obviously, but we didn’t shoot the ball well. We’re better than that shooting the ball.
"I just felt like we got real stagnant, when you look down and only have four assist to 18 turnovers. Our number one key was taking care of the ball and you look at it and you have 18 turnovers and got two players that have seven of them. Guys that we’re not even expecting, that shouldn’t be turning the ball over, not understanding the value of the ball.
"I think that will be a big lesson that we learn from watching this tape. We’ve harped on it and harped on it, we can’t give the ball away 18 times like we did. We did a better job on the boards but we got our perimeter defense just getting beat too easy. Didn’t fight the drive. Early in the game I thought we defended them and then we didn’t sustain it.
"They were just coming downhill against our guards and we didn’t put up enough resistance. We got away from the scouting report, we were playing guys on the perimeter too tight and we shouldn’t have been playing and we let them drive right by us. Like I said we got beat by a good team tonight. They beat us."
(On if he expects turnovers from a freshman point guard and how it can be corrected)
"You do expect it, especially against a team that’s pretty much in midseason form. They know what they’re doing and they’ve played together for a long time. Again, we just stopped moving. I just felt like we need Robert Hubbs III to be more active when he doesn’t have the ball as opposed to searching the ball out and getting into screens. He had a tough night shooting the ball and we bobbled the ball coming off screens and just too anxious at times. Again, some of the things we did tonight you would expect, some of them we didn’t. I just felt like we didn’t work hard enough offensively and then we were getting down to the end of the possession just waiting around like, ‘What’s next?' We’ve harped on it a couple of weeks now. Again we’re a better shooting team than one for sixteen. I don’t think we gave our self a chance with their offense because of the lack of movement."
(On Lew Evans’ lack of playing time)

"Well it goes back to us thinking we needed to rebound the ball. From what we’ve seen in practice, Lew hasn’t been one of those rebounders. We don’t want to post him up, but first play, he’s goes in and posts up and almost turns it over. That’s not what we want. That goes back to execution. Lew’s playing as much as anybody and has a lot of confidence in him, but he’s one guy coming out of the start of the season that you expect to really know what we need. With switching, he had to work hard to stay in front of the guards. I thought Kyle [Alexander] really gave us a great night when you look at what he did. He’s improved a lot. He had eight rebounds, four blocks, and a steal and he got caught back there a few times because of our guards giving up penetration when he had to try to make two plays at once but there’s no doubt that our defense broke down when it happened. And a big part of the game, with 10 minutes to go, we missed five out of seven free throws or we could have gotten back in it, or at least turned the momentum. Those free throws were big at that time."
(On the length of Kwe Parker’s absence due to injury)

"The day before yesterday it started to bother him a little bit, but it’ll be day-to-day."
(On the lack of fast break opportunities and how that affected the offense)

"Jordan Bone is learning to play college basketball. And with him running our offense, it’s up to him to get the ball down the court and again, they were pressing a little bit early, which is fine. At the end, he had chances to get fast break points, but in that mode where he didn’t understand to go when he needed to. Again, we needed to get some stops, too, to get out and run like that, but we need him to get the ball down the court quicker and he didn’t do that as much as we like. And we also wanted him to attack, as you can see he’s extremely quick. We wanted him to keep attacking, keep attacking, but he’s not there to do that yet. He can shoot the ball, but he has to pride himself on assist-to-turnover ratio, and more than anything, on running the team and getting him teammates going in what we need to do."
(On if he considers the early season loss a good lesson for the team)
"We’re going to be okay. We played a team tonight that was in mid-season form, and we’re certainly not. You’d expect some of the things that happened tonight to happen at the beginning of the year. I’ve said before, I think these first two games of the season are going to be great for us. I would have been surprised if we would have been the favorite tonight. I don’t think we’ll be favored one time in Maui, which I think is great. Again, I know these guys are going to work, I know they’re going to keep fighting, but some reality set in tonight where some guys better realize that they better play their role, or the minutes they thought they were going to play, they won’t play. But I think this schedule is going to help us, I really do. This game is part of the Maui Invitational and again, it’s a tough opener. There were some good things, but we didn’t sustain them, and we’ll have to learn from this how hard it is to win a college basketball game against a good basketball team."
(On shot selection mistakes)
"We turned down some shots and that's what we've been harping on. We turned down some shots. We ran a couple plays to get guys the ball where we think they can score and they didn't shoot it where we could get a chance to rebound the ball. Not everybody, there's some guys who will shoot it anytime they get it, but we need certain guys within the flow of the offense to shoot shots that we've worked on. We didn't do that, that's why Shembari Phillips sat in the first half. He came off and had a wide open shot and shot what he shot. I said 'Look, if you're not going to shoot that shot because you didn't shoot it; you made another pass and put us in another clock situation that we didn't have to be in, then we ended up turning the ball over.' We had a wide open look at what we wanted. It goes back to guys taking shots. If you do the process and run the offense, you can live with missing shots as long as you take the shots that we practice. That's a part of the game. We did rebound the ball better. Grant Williams, in the second half got aggressive on the glass but he had turnovers. We need Grant to give us more physicality. We need more from John Fulkerson. We told him going into the game and we talked to him about traveling and he goes right in the game and gets called for a traveling violation. That's the stuff that we talk to the guys about and they can't go in the game and do exactly what we tell them they can't do. That's being young and we'll work through it."
(On Admiral's Schofield performance)
"He understands what we need from him. We need him to rebound and play defense. What I know about Admiral is that every time he misses a three, it affects his game. I don't care if he ever makes a three. He shot one that he shouldn't have shot, and then he came back and had one wide open and he missed it and it changed his whole outlook on basketball in terms of how he's supposed to play. That's not his role. If he makes them, fine, if he doesn't that's okay. We need him to play defense and rebound and take care of the ball. Keep the ball moving."
Tennessee guard Jordan Bone
(On what he can take away from his 21-point performance)
"I feel like I have to run the team better. I think I could have been more vocal, more effective on the defensive end. I feel like we didn’t have a voice out there tonight, but we are going to learn from this game."
(On the transition to college basketball)
"It’s tough to take that in. It’s a learning process and its going to be hard on you. He (Coach Barnes) expects a lot. But we have to learn from this game."
(On what the team needs to focus on moving forward)
"I feel like we have to come out with a lot more energy. We have to run our offense. We have to be more effective on the glass. We have to guard. Our guards have to be able to stay in front (defensively) of really good guards."
Tennessee forward Kyle Alexander
(On Chattanooga’s hot start in the second half)
"It’s huge. Those first four minutes before the media timeout, those are big. That’s when you have to make a statement. We come into the locker room at halftime. Coach tells us everything we need to improve on and the things we are not doing well, and we come out and let them go on a run. That’s something we can’t have and we are going to have to fix for next week."
(On freshman Jordan Bone learning from tonight’s game)
"He’s a guy who gets a lot of constructive criticism in practice because he is a very skilled point guard. We need him to produce a lot this year. He’s a guy who is very mature for his age. He comes in and he learns. I think it is very smart, very mature of him to look at the stuff he did wrong, look at the stuff he did right and learn from it."
(On being humbled in the first game)
"I think this is a game we need to learn from. Chattanooga is a really good team. They have a lot of seniors. They are experienced. It was a good first game for us to come into and learn from. We just can’t make the same mistakes we did in this game."
Chattanooga head coach Matt McCall
(Opening statement)
"I was really proud of how our team played tonight. They obviously had adversity in the game in a terrific environment. I told our staff before the game, being back in that locker room, I’ve had some good moments and bad moments in that locker room being at Florida for all those years. I’m proud of our team. I’m proud of how they’ve come together, they’ve stayed together. Obviously we lost a starter a couple of weeks ago to an ACL and I had to move some things around and do some different things and those guys responded. I was proud of their connectivity the last two weeks in talking and preaching about it; just proud of the effort tonight in a great environment. It was a great win for our basketball team."
(On his halftime message)
"It was a lot about just continue doing what we’re doing. I felt like Tennessee in the second half would turn up the pressure a little bit. I think Kwe Parker being out hurts them, because he’s so good at guarding the ball. I just kept saying, ‘Keep playing the way we’re playing, let’s take care of the ball the second half when we get down the lane play up two feet and we’ll get good looks. We have got to rebound. Ultimately, just keep playing the game, put 20 more minutes on the clock and continue to do what we do. Just get lost in the competition. Don’t flinch when adversity hits or when they make a run,' and we were able to do that."
(On his seniors)
"It obviously helps having those guys back, but it’s a completely new team and a new year. We’ve talked a lot about we’re not recreating last year. This is a new season, new challenges. With our guys, I’m just proud of how they’ve approached that with the expectation piece of it that’s been tagged on to all these guys that are coming back. They really approached this thing the right way and haven’t got complacent. I’m just really proud of the effort and we had a lot of new guys out there that hadn’t ever played in a college basketball game."
