‘We’ve started over so many times.’ UK’s next opponent has faced numerous setbacks.
Thursday’s telephone conversation with Tennessee Coach Rick Barnes began with a confession. The caller admitted that it was hard to feel confident about what the Vols were and weren’t this season.
“Welcome to the club,” Barnes said.
Departures to the 2019 NBA Draft that weren’t part of long-range planning, players elevated into more prominent roles, injuries and midseason additions to the roster have made for a chaotic season. Barnes acknowledged how hard it is to know what Tennessee team Kentucky will be playing on Saturday.
“I feel like we’ve started over so many times,” Barnes said.
The headline-grabbing screeching of the brakes came 11 games into the season. That’s when Tennessee lost senior Lamonte Turner, the point guard and the foundational piece of Barnes’ plan for 2019-20. Turner was diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome, a disorder affecting blood vessels or nerves between a collarbone and first rib. Stress from sports-related repetitive movement can cause the condition, which can cause pain in the shoulder and neck, plus numbness in fingers.
Gone for the season was a player who was leading the Southeastern Conference in assists at the time (7.1 per game) and had scored 1,086 points in his UT career.
Tennessee lost its next game to Wisconsin 68-48.
Barnes had counted upon Turner to help Tennessee transition after juniors Grant Williams (First Team All-SEC) and Jordon Bone (Second Team) entered last year’s NBA Draft. Kentucky, which all but bills itself as a gateway to the NBA, applauds one-and-done players — or in this case three-and-done players. But Barnes said that the effect is more disruptive at a Tennessee.
“When you recruit some of the players John (Calipari) recruits, you expect them to be gone,” the UT coach said. “But no one would have thought that Grant Williams or Jordan Bone would have been gone.
“You throw that in with a healthy Lamonte Turner, we’d be right back where we’d like to be to sustain what we had going.”
Tennessee (13-9 overall and 5-4 in the SEC), finished tied for second place in the league last season with a 15-3 record. The season before the Vols were co-champions with Auburn at 13-5.
Plan B
A week after losing Turner, Tennessee’s Plan B also made headlines, if not history.
The new point guard was Santiago Vescovi, a freshman from Uruguay who had enrolled on Dec. 28. He made his debut against LSU on Jan. 4. Vescovi, whose grandfather (Daniel Yannet) was a basketball star in Uruguay, scored 18 points and made six three-point shots.
“I was really taken by what he knew about our offense,” Barnes said in his postgame news conference.
When asked Thursday what he thought as he watched a player with one week of experience make six three-pointers, Barnes said, “Well, what went through my mind is he had nine turnovers. But, he’s going to be a good player because he works at it. And the guys love him. He’s a great teammate.
“But he’s a freshman.”
And Vescovi is not Turner.
Of the transition to not having Turner, Barnes said, “We had to go away from what we had done, what we had primarily had been working on pretty much all year with.”
Promising freshman Josiah-Jordan James missed time in the preseason, Barnes said. James (7.8 ppg and 36.7-percent shooting on threes) did not play in Tennessee’s last two games because of a groin injury and is listed as day-to-day.
Helping compensate for James’ absence has been 7-footer Uros Plavsic, a native of Serbia. UT did not know if he could play this season after transferring from Arizona State. But after multiple appeals to the NCAA, he gained his eligibility in mid-January.
Amid the uncertainty, Tennessee veterans like Jordan Bowden, Yves Pons and John Fulkerson had to adjust to more prominent roles.
“So, we have no continuity from a year ago,” Barnes said.
Doing what’s necessary
Pons, a 6-foot-6 swingman who has blocked at least one shot in 22 straight games, has been forced to divide his time between the front line and the perimeter depending on what each game dictates.
“Everybody in the country would want him on their team because he’s going to do whatever he can to help the team,” Barnes said of Pons.
Doing what’s necessary and adjusting sometimes game to game defines this Tennessee season.
“The one word I don’t think I’d use for our team is consistency,” Barnes said at a news conference Thursday.
Late in the phone call, Barnes lamented the lack of a predictable flow to this season.
“You’d like to get some rhythm going … ,” he said. “This has been a year for the ages in terms of the stuff we’ve dealt with. That’s fine. I say, whatever we got, let’s go play.”
Saturday
No. 15 Kentucky at Tennessee
When: 1 p.m.
TV: CBS-27
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Kentucky 17-5 (7-2 SEC), Tennessee 13-9 (5-4)
Series: Kentucky leads 155-73
Last meeting: Tennessee won 82-78 on March 16, 2019, in the semifinals of the SEC Tournament at Nashville, Tenn.
