Buzz, you're more than smart enough to know that success at the mid-major level doesn't always translate to the P5. You and SD have convinced yourselves that Donnie was the savior of TN bb, and maybe he would have been, but I don't think that's a given. IMO, we needed at least 2 more years to make a good judgement. For the record, I thought Donnie was a good hire at the time and still think he
had a good chance to succeed, but so much for that thought.
BTW, if you're a stat fan you already know about this site, but just in case you don't:
https://www.teamrankings.com/ncb/stats/
The gist of it is that Barnes' team was slightly better in quite a few important areas on offense and very little worse, if any, on D. I vote to give this deal a chance for a couple of years.