By CHRIS DORTCH
There are two ways to look at Tennessee’s ouster from the NCAA Tournament at the hands of a Michigan team that will probably win the national championship. Critics of coach Rick Barnes, some of whom think he’s too old to handle the job, will point to the fact he’s led only one team to the Final Four—Texas in 2003—in his 39-year career.
That’s an unfair assessment. People who understand basketball, or tend to look on the bright side, understand what Barnes has accomplished at Tennessee. Formerly derided as “Second Round Rick,” Barnes has now taken the Vols to four consecutive Sweet 16s and three consecutive Elite Eights. No other school in the country—not Duke, UConn, North Carolina, Kansas, Gonzaga or Arizona—can make that claim. And if Zakai Zeigler hadn’t blown out his knee in February 2023, the Vols might have been able to beat Final Four-bound FAU in the Sweet 16 that year. The final score was 62-55. Recall that FAU played four guards and was the team Barnes was most concerned about playing in the tournament without Zeigler to break their defensive pressure.
Some people say anything less than winning it all isn’t good enough. Here’s what I say: For the last three years, Barnes has turned in some of his greatest coaching jobs. He’s not getting older. He’s getting better.
In 2023-24, he changed his basic offense to allow Northern Colorado transfer Dalton Knecht to isolate and attack. His usage rate was 29.%, and he took 33.9% of the shots when on the floor, 17th in the nation. More importantly, he led the Southeastern Conference in scoring, was voted the league’s player of the year, and won the Julius Erving Small Forward of the Year Award.
Barnes usually likes to play inside out, and he did have Jonas Aidoo in the post. Aidoo earned second-team All-SEC honors but was still emerging as an interior threat. Plus, the players Barnes counted on to make 3-pointers just didn’t. Santiago Vescovi had a puzzling senior year. After tossing in 91 3s the year before and shooting 37.0% behind the arc and 100 the season before that at a 40.3% clip, he slumped to 43 and 32.6. At times he seemed reluctant to shoot. Transfer Jordan Gainey, who shot 49.6% from behind the arc as a freshman at USC Upstate, shot 28.6% in his first season with the Vols.
The result was long scoring dry spells that were evident in most of Tennessee’s losses. Knecht was sometimes the only player Barnes could count on to score. But still the Vols advanced to the Elite Eight, where they lost by only six points to eventual national runner-up Purdue.
Last season might have been Barnes’ best coaching job ever. Tennessee had no inside game. Aidoo and sophomore post Tobe Awaka transferred to Arkansas and Arizona, respectively, and sophomore J.P. Estrella, the Vols’ best offensive post, was limited to three games due to a foot injury. And when guard Cameron Carr made a puzzling mid-year transfer to Baylor (where this season he averaged 19.7 points, 5.5 rebounds, 2.7 assists, and shot 39.4% from 3), Barnes was essentially reduced to a seven-man roster. Once again, Barnes relied heavily on a transfer, guard Chaz Lanier from North Florida, to become the focal point of the offense, and he delivered, setting a school record for made 3-pointers (123) while shooting 39.5% behind the arc, and earning Jerry West Shooting Guard of the Year honors.
Zeigler and guard Jahmai Mashack provided veteran stability, but this wasn’t a team that, on paper, would seem Elite Eight worthy. Still, it took Houston, which advanced to the title game, to put an end to Tennessee’s run.
This season, Barnes and his staff brought in 11 newcomers and Tennessee was 136th in the country, per KenPom, in Division I experience (1.6 years per player). The Vols were plagued all season by turnovers, missed free throws, and missed layups, even though Barnes had his deepest, longest, and toughest front line since he’s been in Knoxville. It seems improbable that a team with so many weaknesses could earn its way to the Elite Eight, but the Vols took out tournament darling Miami (Ohio), No. 3 seed Virginia and No. 2 seed Iowa State to get to No. 1 seed Michigan, which handled Tennessee the way it did most of its opponents this season. It would surprise no one if the Wolverines witn the championship.
Some Tennessee fans wonder, and the media loves to write about, what it might take for the Vols to finally advance to the Final Four for the first time in school history. Here’s one idea:
This season, after handing out a reported $3 million to Nate Ament and $1.8 million to Ja’Kobi Gillespie, the Vols were limited with the remainder of their portal acquisitions. They did manage to sign Jaylen Carey, formerly at Vanderbilt, and he had his moments, but couldn’t afford another shooter or two. That was in part because of skyrocketing prices, but also in part because Barnes had a number in mind he didn’t want to surpass.
Shooting is a commodity. Like putting in golf, it can cure a lot of ills. Barnes’ teams at Tennessee have never had an overabundance of shooting. By that I mean players who can shoot in the high 30s to low 40s from 3. To win it all, a team must have three to five players with that kind of ability.
Consider that Gillespie a senior, and Ament, a likely lottery pick, are both departing. If Barnes wants to, he could dole out their combined NIL payouts and find a point guard who values ball security and a couple of shooters with size; think Vanderbilt’s 6-7, 220-pound Tyler Nickel who shot 40% from 3 this season (110 of 275).
Funny enough, but as I write, Tennessee has a player of that caliber on campus, visiting after transferring from Belmont after coach Casey Alexander took the Kansas State job. His name is Tyler, too. That would be Tyler Lundblade, a 6-5, 210-pound graduate who has one of the best stories in college basketball. It’s too long to get into here, but after earning scholarships and then being cut by a pair of power conference schools, Lundblade wound up at Belmont last season as a walk-on and led the nation in 3-point shooting while breaking the school record for 3s in a season (104). This season Lundblade—the Missouri Valley Conference player of the year—was the target of every opposing defense, but he made 115 3s at a 40% clip. He also led the nation in free-throw percentage.
Provided every other player stays, Barnes will have a veteran nucleus—larger than he’s had in the last couple of years—as well as size and depth. Last November, the Vols signed a Top 25 class of three freshmen, all versatile players who can handle multiple positions. And if he can land those shooters I mentioned earlier, he’ll have another team capable of making a deep NCAA Tournament run. “We’re going to come right back here and kick that door down,” Barnes told his players in an emotional postgame locker room talk.
THE WILL WADE DILEMMA
I’ve been friends with Will Wade for 15 years, and he’s one of the savviest, hardest working, and most well-connected coaches in the business. He’s also become a basketball mercenary, a bad look that has left a trail of former assistants and schools in his wake throughout his job-hopping journey from Chattanooga to VCU to LSU to McNeese State to NC State and finally, back to LSU.
It’s funny how quickly things have changed in college basketball. When Wade was fired at LSU in 2022 after his infamous strong-ass offer to a recruit, that was illegal. It turns out Wade was just a man ahead of his time. With the advent of NIL, recruiting has been reduced to, as Barnes said during one of his NCAA Tournament press conferences, “What’s the number?” Even Wade acknowledged that when he met with Atlantic Coast Conference media last fall. “I’m more experienced in NIL than anybody in the country because I was doing it before anybody else,” Wade said with a laugh and a wink.
Actually, strong-ass offers to entice recruits have been around long before Wade was a gleam in his parents’ eyes. I never thought he had to cheat, but he reportedly told someone after he was at hired at LSU the first time that if he didn’t, he’d get fired. Ironic that he did cheat, and still got fired.
Wade is a good enough coach to win anywhere, and without cheating. He’s too smart, dedicates himself almost exclusively to his craft, and knows everyone. But LSU has given him a $14 million NIL stash, so he can make enough strong-ass offers to win. And this time, it’s legal.
As far as his reputation, I feel badly that he’s tarnished his, and lost friends throughout his career. But he doesn’t.
“I long ago quite worrying about my perception,” Wade said after LSU hired him for a second go-round. “I think some of the things have been
mischaracterized on how I left. They’re pretty mad for a coach they didn’t think was very good. That’s the way it goes.”
COACHING CAROUSEL CHATTER
Fans of two SEC schools can breathe a sigh of relief knowing their basketball coaches will not be plundered. Alabama’s Nate Oats and Vanderbilt’s Mark Byington, both thought to be possible candidates for the North Carolina job, are staying put.
Byington signed a multi-year contract extension, and while Oats hasn’t signed a new deal yet, Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne made a social media post that featured a photo of Oats and him with the words “He’s not going anywhere.”