Head Coach Rick Barnes
On whether the plan was to continually go to John Fulkerson late in the game …
“That’s always our plan. It is, but they, I’ve seen John (Calipari)’s teams are going to try to take away what we do, and he was terrific tonight and all of our guys did something great. Every guy that played, but what he did is one of the great performances I’ve witnessed. And he’s been like that, really, it’s really, I go back, and I think about the time with Grant (Williams) and all those guys. They used to say, ‘Fulky, you’re better than all of us.’ And, the fact is, he had so much confidence tonight, but our guys were confident. Even when we were down, and I would walk into the timeout, they were talking to each other about ‘Hey we just can’t keep making those turnovers and mistakes that we’re making.’ And they were great at driving the ball and we really said, ‘Hey we’re going to get into those gaps and they’re going to have to make some jump shots.’ And we actually made some plays in the gap where we knocked it through, got out in transition and got some baskets like that and we tried to speed the tempo up some. But when we got into a dead ball situation, we knew we were going to play through Fulky.”
On what it meant to win in light of the recent tornado in Tennessee …
“Well, again, our thoughts and prayers go out to those that lost people in the devastation there. And I talked to my friend of mine in Cookesville today and I asked him, I said, ‘You know, we’re going to be coming through there next week for the tournament,’ I said, ‘What can we do?’ He said, ‘I’ll think about it,’ but he said, ‘In the meantime, the best thing you can do is beat the Wildcats.’ So, again, if that helps anybody but it’s so sad, what happened there, and again, actually, this is a game but that’s real-life tragedy and I’m just really sad for those people and I just know that we’ve got to keep them in our prayers.”
On the key for Josiah-Jordan James …
“Well I think one, he’s getting healthy for the first time. You know he’s fought that all year, you guys know that, but I do think that he feels the best he’s felt probably since July. And he’s dealt with some serious things where he’s tried to play through it then couldn’t and tried to get back in it, so I do think now, he’s somewhat getting a rhythm. But I think we’re getting a rhythm a little bit more as a team, because you know, with Santi[ago Vescovi] coming in, and he wasn’t terrific tonight but he came back late and made some things happen. Everybody that played, Jalen Johnson’s shots were huge early in the game. But when we were down and came back, everybody made something happen. But Josiah (-Jordan James), I mean, he’s just, he’s got that look. That he’s settled in and he knows what he needs to do and now he just needs to continue to build on it.”
On adversity this season ….
“Well one, I will tell you this, when Wisconsin came in our building and Lamonte (Turner) had decided he was going to quit, we lost because everything we had planned to work on up to that point … we had to fight injuries. Josiah (-Jordan James) had been hurt, and at that point in time that was as low of a mark since I’ve been at Tennessee. (Santiago) Vescovi came in, had three days of practice, and we knew it was inevitable that he was going to start, so I said, ‘We’re going to start him.’ We watched his growth. Josiah has been in and out. Uros (Plavsic) became eligible. For what this team has gone through and to be in this position. I think is really remarkable to be quite honest.”
On Josiah-Jordan James …
“I think across the board, I said it this week and I mean it right now too, I think that Kentucky and Kansas are the two best teams, and I think Kentucky is the most underappreciated team in college basketball, and I still believe that. That makes the fact the way we came back really something special for these guys because they felt coming in that they could win. I’m not going to say that we didn’t because we could. We went back and looked at our tape against them there. They are a much better team, but we were ten times better than we were in Knoxville. We weren’t very good on offense. Defensively, they’ve improved a lot. Across the board, I said it, not one guy didn’t help us get done what we needed to get done tonight.”
On the competition in college basketball …
“I think you look at Kentucky, you look at college basketball this year, it’s not just in our league. I think our league is underrated, but the fact of the matter is we tell our guys all the time when you lose a game by 10 points, it’s a four-possession game. Early in the year when you’re turning the ball over 20-25 times and you’re spotting the other team 10 extra possessions a game, you’re not going to win, and we didn’t win. The last two games, I didn’t look at how many turnovers we had tonight, we had 15, they had 14. Normally when we were losing, we were having 20-25. Games are closer than you think. Free throws are huge. We want to get to the free throw line. We tried to keep them off the line, but they do such a great job of getting there. We told our guys if everybody plays great, it’s going to be a close game. I don’t care who we play, and I believe that, Not just in our league, but in college basketball.”
On lost possessions in the first half …
“There’s a lot of things we could talk about. Did you take away the fact that (John) Fulkerson had a rebound, I can’t remember who took it from him, hit a three and then at the end of the half Santiago Vescovi didn’t block out and he ended the half and I said that’s five point. I said, ‘Right now this is a five point ball game even with the bad mistakes that we made and the turnovers that we had.’ They got 20 points off our turnovers in the first half, I know it, and although the turnovers were even, we didn’t have many points off it. And again, that’s all we kept talking about. Just take care of the ball and during one of the last timeouts when we got up the guys said, ‘Turn the heat up, we’re going to have to handle the ball and take care of the ball better’, and we did. I was upset at the end of the first half because I felt like we had done some things that we didn’t need to do but we just kept fighting back, and you wonder sometimes how much can you fight back, come back from 17 and again the credit goes to those guys it really does.”
On second stretch rebounds …
“Kentucky plays as hard as anybody and it’s really a simple formula if you want to win a basketball game. You have to play defense, rebound, and try to control the free throw line. You have to get there if you want to get on the road and win. Early in the game, Kentucky was getting to those rebounds, but late we came up with some and the game turned for us when we were able to break the ball loose when they were driving it in transition. Kentucky is as good as anybody in that area, but we started doing it and said they’re going to have to shoot jump shots and then we got out made some plays and some of those offensive stick-backs were big.”
On control last 10 minutes of game …
“There was a look about our guys. On the bench, coaches are always reminding me about timeouts and I told you guys before there’s a look that you see on your players faces sometimes and you don’t want to get in their way and they had that look tonight where I felt like whatever we call, they were going to execute it and they did. (John) Fulkerson was terrific. I think our guys knew we could get him the ball and he would make something happen. He made a great kickout from three and he’ll make the right play and we got on him with the travel because he should’ve been moving more, but again he was terrific.”
Tennessee Student Athletes
#10 John Fulkerson, R–Jr., F.
On practicing for the game today …
“We practice every single day, it’s what we come to Tennessee for, it’s just what we practice.”
On relying on teammates in the second half …
“You know you can’t play one on five. One person can’t get it done even though if you score, you know, 40 plus, you know, one person can’t get it done. It’s got to be a team effort and so I think that’s exactly what it was. I think everybody came to play. We have some big-time players make big time shots, and so I think it was a great team effort, a great team win.”
On Tennessee’s recent struggle with closing out games …
“My dad said, ‘You know what it feels like to come back from 17 down,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah because you know what happened with Auburn.’ So, we knew that I guess, if they can do it against us then we can do it against them, so we just kept fighting and just fought until the end.”
On why this game was different from past games when Tennessee was down …
“I just think what we’ve been talking about is doing whatever it takes to win and Jordan Bowden once said either last year, or a few years ago he said, ‘We never want to walk off the court and say that the other team wanted it more than us.’ So, every time we leave the court, we want to want it more than them. We never want to have regret or say they wanted it more. That’s something that we pride ourselves on, just playing hard and doing what it takes to win and just wanting it.”
#13, Jalen Johnson, R-Jr., G
On the two big three’s he made in the first half …
“Those are shots that I work on all the time, so I got it in rhythm and shot and made one.”
On how closing out games has been an issue recently, so how is this comeback was different from others…
“I feel like because this has been the case for a few of our big games, I feel like we’re learning from our past mistakes and learning how to finish out the game the right way, so I think that showed tonight, definitely.”
On the things that were done differently to allow the team to make a comeback …
“We really executed in the second half. Although we didn’t turn over the ball as much as we have in the past, we still had to limit some of our turnovers because they got 20 points off our first half turnovers, so we had to limit some of those. Then down the line I think we got a lot of stops too.”
On what the team was saying to each other when they were down by 17 …
“This game isn’t over. I mean we’ve had games where we got a pretty good double-digit lead and teams came back on us, so we’ve made it a theme of finishing out the game on this team.”
#5, Josiah-Jordan James, Fr., G
On what allowed him to assertive/aggressive in the second half …
“Just trying to do whatever I can to get my team back into the game. I knew we were going to fight until the last 20 minutes were up in the second half. Just trying to play all out during the time that I was in there.”
On if he looked forward to playing this game for the first time with the rivalry that the two teams have …
“Yeah definitely, and playing in Rupp Arena for the first time, I definitely looked forward to that. I know it’s a great experience, great place to play, great atmosphere, but I definitely looked forward to it, not being able to play the first time.”
On what the team has learned about closing games, from games that the team hasn’t been able to close the first time …
“You got to play from start to finish. What the coach has really been harping on is stop turning the ball over from our standpoint, we got to take away the possession, and giving the possession, but we don’t get a shot up with the turnovers or we don’t let them get more turnovers throughout the game. So just taking care of the ball, and just playing harder. He always talks about a quote that Jordan Bone had that is, ‘Never at the end of the game let that team say that they wanted to win it more than you,’ and that has just been our mindset, and tonight we had that mindset.”