“Congratulations to Rick (Barnes) and Tennessee. Wow, what a game did they play. And we tried to come back a little bit, but it didn’t work. So congratulations. What a game. Great environment.”

 

“Tom Brady made a statement that makes—that these guys aren’t listening to and I told it to them last night. Doing what’s right for the team sometimes may not be right for you, but that’s how you win. You do what’s right for the team, not necessarily what’s right for you as an individual player and I’m not getting through to some guys. And I told them after: You’ll continue to lose. I’ve done this 30 years. You cannot do the stuff they’re doing and win basketball games. You cannot do it. So I don’t want to call guys out, but I could go right down the line. Here’s what I’m asking you to do, you refuse to do it. Here’s what I’m asking you to do—I gotta call a timeout and, wait a minute—but we’re all freshmen. We made need to lose a few games in a row and then have them come to my office en masse and say, ‘Coach, we surrender. Tell us what you want us to do. Because we know we can’t win now but we think we can. We thought we were out in Vegas playing Houston Stars but we’re not.’ We got all young kids and it’s just growing pains.”

 

“No, because I didn’t remember we were down 21 until someone told me. Or up 21 and then they came back and beat us. No. I didn’t. Every team I coach is so different. That game, the way that happened had nothing to do with this. Tennessee led from the start in this game, ‘til the finish. Start to finish, they led. We didn’t turn them over. We had no active hands. We were more concerned about what we were going to do on offense. We wouldn’t throw Bam (Adebayo) the ball until I said at halftime, ‘That’s it. You either throw him the ball or you’re coming out.’ Again, let me say this: Doing what’s right for the team isn’t always right for you personally. And we just gotta—it’s an area we’re going to have to work on and now we have a Kansas team coming in that, you know. And then we have Georgia at home. They’re playing good, you know. And then I can’t remember who the next game is. I know those next two. But it may be—I hate to lose, but sometimes it’s good. Either you’ll listen. We’ll have two days of—let me tell you, everybody that’s watched this team, you know what we usually look like? Pass, pass, pass, pass, in, out, drive, kick, go. You know what we’re doing right now? Whoever has it holds it as long as they can until they make a pass. And the pass they want to make is the hero scoring pass. We’re not playing how we were playing two weeks ago. Maybe we got arrogant. Again, it comes back to what I’m accepting as a coach. And obviously I’m accepting this kind of play from young kids and I’ve gotta do a better job and I will.”

 

“Yeah. They hadn’t been making 3s but I said before the game, ‘They will make them against us. Everybody does.’ They were making five a game. How many did they make today? (Five of 10) Maybe it wasn’t. I thought they did a great job of driving the ball. They made some tough, tough baskets and, again, we have 14 turnovers and only 14 assists. We were getting 30 assists. We’re at 14. Next week it may be seven. We’ve got to pass the ball to each other. You gotta make it easy on each other and then you’re making it hard on the other team. We’re doing it the opposite. We’re making it hard for us and making it easy for the other team. Look, I don’t want to take away from Tennessee and what Rick did. Their game plan of getting back. We didn’t get much in transition. They played more physical. They were grinding and then trying to drive it. And we were—on the fourth pass we stood straight up and they were just driving by us. And we kept saying in every timeout, ‘Do you understand what they’re doing? They’re going side to side with the ball and then somebody is going to try to break somebody down on the bounce. But, again, when you’re coaching young teams, you’re starting four freshmen, playing a couple sophomore, you get this sometimes. And now we gotta go back and hopefully this grabs their attention and we get back to, all right, how do we have to play as a team to try to be one of those teams. What we were tonight, we’re not. And a lot of that credit goes to Tennessee.”