Rick Barnes explains what the key to a long 2025 NCAA Tournament run is for Tennessee

It’s been more than 20 years since Rick Barnes made his lone Final Four appearance as a head coach.

Last season, Barnes oversaw an Elite Eight run with the Tennessee Volunteers, but he and the Vols came one game short of winning a regional championship.

Could this be the year that Barnes breaks through and takes Tennessee to its first Final Four in school history?

If so, then the pathway will have a prominent, and somewhat ironic, starting point.

Tennessee is a 2 seed in the 2025 men’s NCAA Tournament, and will begin play in the Midwest Regional at 6:50 p.m. Thursday against 15 seed Wofford, a team that’s full of March Madness storylines.

That game will be played in Lexington at Rupp Arena, where the Vols have already lost once this season.

After a stellar regular season and a run to the SEC Tournament championship game, it’s time for Tennessee to take on the national postseason.

Prior to the Volunteers’ opening NCAA Tournament game against the Terriers, here’s everything Barnes said during his pre-tournament press conference at Rupp.

Opening statement.

Well, again, congratulations to all the teams that made it to the tournament this year. It’s always an incredible experience to get here. Something you never take for granted.

We know that we have a very tough opponent first round against Wofford who we played a year ago in a very close game at our place. Coach (Dwight) Perry has done a great job with his team. Older, playing great basketball at the right time of the year.

Question about Tennessee seniors Zakai Zeigler and Jahmai Mashack.

Well, really they came in at a time when we were trying to grow the program. They have done an incredible job when they got here, understanding their role at the time, but knowing that at some point in time the baton would be handed to them. They have done a phenomenal job really all four years.

But when you think about this year’s team coming back with Jordan Gainey, who was a part of it last year, and Cade Phillips, and then losing J.P. early, but they’ve done a great job blending our new guys in from the time they walked on campus almost a year ago. They talked about how we do things. And oftentimes we will leave it up to those guys to take care of situations that arise, and both of them have just been really great captains.

Question about Rick Barnes and Tennessee’s familiarity with Rupp Arena.

I don’t know that it really does. If you talk about being in it, people don’t realize how extremely hard it is just to win one game in this tournament, let alone try to win the whole thing. I think by the time — in our situation, we have played here obviously.

But I don’t know that it’s a big deal. I don’t really know — I would think not, to be quite honest with you. I just think that guys have played a lot of basketball this year. And right now they’re focused on just trying to continue to do what they’ve done to get here, and I think that’s as far as getting some time in a gym to go shoot, players adjust pretty quickly with that.

Question about coaches in the Midwest Regional, like Barnes, who are still looking for their first NCAA title.

I think there is always motivation to win. And, I mean, yeah, I think every coach that’s ever coached the game, we dream of winning a national championship, there is no question about it. But there is only one every year that is going to end up being the last team standing there on Monday night.

Through my time in it, we have had teams that fought hard to get here, and getting here was — you don’t ever take it for granted. There have been many players that have never had a chance to be a part of this, which I think is the greatest sporting event in our country.

As coaches, yeah, we want to win. There’s no doubt we want to win. Do we want to win national championships? No doubt about it. You do everything you can from the time you start in the preseason with your team to prepare them and hope that you get here and hope that it breaks your way.

It’s hard whether you lose in the first round or whether you lose — if you lose in the national semifinals, and I’m sure it’s the same feeling if you lose on Monday. Everything has come to an abrupt end, just quickly, and that’s always really — it’s tough, it really is, but the motivation to win, whether you’ve been coaching two years, five years, 25, 35, 40, you want to win a national championship.

Question about the SEC investing in men’s basketball.

Oh, yeah, 10 years ago, I mentioned it last week, 10 years ago in the (2016 SEC Tournament) play-in game in Nashville, (Auburn coach) Bruce (Pearl) and I were in that game together. But also remember the very first meeting that year for me at Destin and Commissioner (Greg) Sankey came in and gave a pretty harsh talk to the coaches in the league and said, I know we haven’t done all that we can do.

He would tell you, I think, that Commissioner (Mike) Slive had started moving the needle in that direction, but he knew that there had to be a commitment from all the universities. He knew that he had to take over and get the officiating where it needed to get to. I think he’s done that, certainly.

A big part of it was scheduling. We are in charge of our nonleague schedule. At the time our league was probably about as bad as any league in the country in terms of how we scheduled nonleague. Then you go back, everything that has happened in the ten years has been a commitment from the top down. You see a — I think at one time, I think maybe athletic directors at one time felt like you couldn’t be good in every sport, but I remember that first meeting Commissioner Sankey said we’re good in every sport except basketball, consistently. And he said we need to be there. I’m fortunate that I work for truly one of the great athletic directors in the country who expects, wants, and is going to do everything he can to help our coaches at Tennessee to compete at the very highest level.

He knows what needs to be done, he understands it, but the commitment has to come from the top certainly on every campus, and I tell everyone I think we have the best administrators in all of sports with Randy Boyd and Donde Plowman, and the fact they went out and hit a grand slam with Danny White and the staff he’s put together, that’s where it starts.

I haven’t coached against any bad coaches, I really haven’t. I’ve coached against coaches that haven’t had the same resources along the way, and sometimes you can win some of the time like that, but not overall at the level that you want to be able to sustain it.

Question about Tennessee’s rebounding against Florida in the SEC Tournament championship game.

When I look at that game, Florida did what they had to do. There’s a lot of things that go into it but you gotta give them credit, their post guys, you come up with 15 offensive rebounds, paint points, second-chance points, those were the difference in the game. Even when we were able to maybe get a stop or they missed a shot and they could go get it and score, kick out, those are devastating body blows that really hurt. But you’ve got to give them credit.

They dominated the backboard. The frustrating thing was at our place we did a much better job, and that was the number one emphasis that we placed in that game, and we just didn’t get it done. But, again, you have to give them credit because they had something to do with the reason we didn’t get it done, and we’ve got to have a different mindset most certainly in this next game.

Question about what the key is for Tennessee to make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament.

By now we need to understand truly into what makes you understand losing basketball games and getting out-rebounded by 15 rebounds is going to make you lose a basketball game. So I think it goes back to the absolute focus, details, competitive spirit, working as hard as you can and understanding the importance of every possession. You know, I think every team, I’m not sure many teams will change what they do up to this point because you want to do what got you here, where your players realize, hey, this is the next step and what got us here is what’s got us here, but the focus and the game plan is understanding that it’s really hard to win this time of year.

This story was originally published March 19, 2025 at 4:51 PM.

Cameron Drummond

Lexington Herald-Leader

859-242-5257

Cameron Drummond works as a sports reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader with a focus on Kentucky men’s basketball recruiting and the UK men’s basketball team, horse racing, soccer and other sports in Central Kentucky. Drummond is a second-generation American who was born and raised in Texas, before graduating from Indiana University. He is a fluent Spanish speaker who previously worked as a community news reporter in Austin, Texas. Support my work with a digital subscription