A Reluctant Criticism of Barnes

#51
#51
Whoa. Nationally men's baseball #10, tennis is #3, track finished indoor season in top ten. Women's softball, roundball, soccer ranked.

I'll give you the football disaster, but otherwise our all-sports prospects are better than they've been in a while.
How bout tiddlywinks or badminton, these are about the same as those you mention in the realm of importance.
 
#52
#52
Barnes isn't getting fired and we'd be stupid to even entertain it.

But he needs to take a look in the mirror and realize he needs to change some things, and he needs to win in the postseason. This season piled on his already shaky reputation as a guy that is good but not great.

I wonder if he could "turn loose" a little bit and let his staff start to handle more of the day to day. If they can't handle the responsibility, then maybe he needs some new faces to do more of the day to day.
 
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#54
#54
JJJ isn't a bust. He is just not the kind of 5* player that most people wanted or think of when they see five stars by the name and they go gah-gah. You were warned before he ever stepped foot on campus not to expect immediate dominance, that he wasn't an alpha personality, or a big-time scorer. The 5* label was as unfair to him as it was to Robert Hubbs. Good players, but not great. People were warned about both and to cautiously temper expectations. Thru the first third of our season, JJJ was our team MVP, in my opinion. We were also undefeated. Not sure what happened.
We have no idea how individuals react or respond to circumstances in their lives. He lost everything he had when his house burned down. That oftentimes translates to other areas of your life and can take an unplanned emotional toll. It’s very possible this happened with JJJ. He had 13 rebounds in 24 minutes yesterday, yet you won’t see this absurdly great performance talked about. As one supposedly knowledgeable (in his own eyes) fan said, JJJ is average at best. The lunacy on this board is absolutely dumbfounding.
 
#55
#55
Is there a lot of talent on this team? Besides the freshman and Pons, I'm not so sure.

Pember, Gaines, EJ, ON look like they should be at a smaller school.

JJJ is a bust. Who knows about Walker

VB and SV are not reliable at all. One good game followed by several bad ones is their pattern.

Fulky is the mystery. Don't buy the Covid excuse.

I think this is a fair analysis. And even Pons and the two freshmen have glaring weaknesses in their games.
 
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#56
#56
At this point, I'm just hoping Danny White takes a good, hard, objective look at our basketball program and makes whatever decision needs to be made before things go from bad to worse.
 
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#57
#57
Why is TN lucky to have coach Barnes? He is getting paid a King’s Ransom and delivers below expected results most of the time. Bottom line is that TN isn’t hanging Banners from the rafters and I don’t see this happening under Barnes. He is to old, tired and stubborn to adjust his offense and that is not going to change. Get prepared for under achieving mediocrity if TN continues to be satisfied with the results Barnes is putting on the court.

If you think this is underachieving mediocrity, you must be a new Vols basketball fan. Yes, it has been worse...much, much worse.
 
#58
#58
CB did a poor coaching job with the talent he recruited. It appeared to me, the team lost something as he worked in the talented freshman. Earlier in the year, they were a final four team. CB lost this team and he better figure out why because none of his players appeared to enjoy playing at the end of the season.

Another fair analysis IMO.
 
#61
#61
Barnes is at the point that coach Majors & Fulmer were at the end of their coaching careers. They just could not upgrade with the game. The vols could be up by 10,15, or 20 points at halftime & still lose the game by double digits, because Barnes doesn't make the Halftime Adjustments, the other teams coaches did. He is just too stubborn to the fact. It's his way or no way. I say just coach up the talent that you have to the players strengths. Plus Barnes cannot recruit a good quality # 5 big man over 6'8". This is why we have 2 player projected in the top 15 in the draft, because those scouts know when players are held back & not coached up!!!!!
 
#64
#64
How bout tiddlywinks or badminton, these are about the same as those you mention in the realm of importance.

And you can KMA. Somebody said UT athletics were mediocre and I made a case that they weren't. If he said our 2 biggest revenue sports were mediocre I would have let it go.

Tiddlywinks, dude? Seriously - KMA.
 
#65
#65
I think it is Simple that the OFFENSIVE Scheme that Barnes installed this Season did not Work and he never Adjusted.
I think he ran the same ole outdated Davidson Motion offense(his version) that he doesn't recruit the right kind of players to run. He recruits defensive minded guys for the most part and tries to develop their offensive side which he has always done a miserable job at. keon and Jaden were close but he just didnt know how to use their talents.
 
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#66
#66
Lmao...how quickly we forget “bad”
This team pretty spectacularly failed to live up to not only expectations, but to their potential as well. I'd say that's pretty bad.
Aside from Chandler and Mashack, I don't see where Rick Barnes is bringing in the type of talent to overcome the weak spots on the roster.
 
#68
#68
“Lucky” has a context. Only UT would hire a Bammer AD, who then would go mute on the “bring back Bruce” nonsense, and then forgo a search firm and hire a guy like Donnie Tyndall. He was basically bailed out of fireable miscues by Texas letting Barnes go at the most opportune time.

Barnes against that backdrop looks pretty damn good. So far, he has caught lightning in a bottle one year, and has looked pretty pathetic the rest of the time. His tourney woes followed him here.
Amen
 
#69
#69
This team had no inside game whatsoever, needed a true point guard and we could not knock down 3 pointers consistently to save our lives. Once Florida exposed UT and how to defend us in the first meeting every team we played used a similar approach. Also we did not have a true leader like Grant or Admiral to lead this team and I think the true freshman are good , but showed their youth and inexperience at critical times. Barnes needs to get aggressive in the transfer portal and fill some glaring weaknesses in the roster
I was concerned about our inside game from the start of the season. I think it was a problem in the games we lost. Yesterday for example their big hammered us inside for sure in that terrible 1st half. Hopefully, CRB will fill that hole thru the transfer route this offseason. If he doesn't next year could be worse than this one.
 
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#70
#70
This team had no inside game whatsoever, needed a true point guard and we could not knock down 3 pointers consistently to save our lives. Once Florida exposed UT and how to defend us in the first meeting every team we played used a similar approach. Also we did not have a true leader like Grant or Admiral to lead this team and I think the true freshman are good , but showed their youth and inexperience at critical times. Barnes needs to get aggressive in the transfer portal and fill some glaring weaknesses in the roster

Well reasoned post among several terrible takes in this thread.
 
#71
#71
Lmao...how quickly we forget “bad”

And, what is the "bad" we're talking about? The .500 team in the Tyndall year which his recruiting produced about half of our top 6 lineup in Barnes' one golden year? Yes, the firing of Tyndall was embarrassing, but Barnes has six years in this gig and half of those seasons were on the lower end of the Tennessee scale akin to the Buzz Peterson days. He has as many NCAA wins as Martin and less than Pearl.

He's alright as a coach, but he's been trading on one-two good years here and accomplishments from nearly 20 years ago. Yesterday was really, really bad and it's perfectly reasonable to ask if he's the guy to get us to the next level. He hasn't accomplished anything thus far in which a couple of his predecessors haven't. It's not like it would be impossible to find another cat to do the same things he's done. That said, I'm not advocating firing him or anything, but I remain as I always have with Barnes, feeling like it should have been more than it was.
 
#72
#72
That’s your problem.

You’re comparing Tennessee to Bama and what they’re doing. It doesn’t work that way.

If that was the case then every school would be getting upgrades over their previous coaches.
Why exactly can’t we compare our basketball program to Bammer? Pretty similar programs really
 
#73
#73
This team pretty spectacularly failed to live up to not only expectations, but to their potential as well. I'd say that's pretty bad.
Aside from Chandler and Mashack, I don't see where Rick Barnes is bringing in the type of talent to overcome the weak spots on the roster.
You act like this roster has zero talent, good lord.

I should save these posts so when next year rolls around and we are dancing all of you same ones that I’m sure will be b!thing again can look back and see how you didn’t even think we’d be dancing.
 
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#75
#75
And, what is the "bad" we're talking about? The .500 team in the Tyndall year which his recruiting produced about half of our top 6 lineup in Barnes' one golden year? Yes, the firing of Tyndall was embarrassing, but Barnes has six years in this gig and half of those seasons were on the lower end of the Tennessee scale akin to the Buzz Peterson days. He has as many NCAA wins as Martin and less than Pearl.

He's alright as a coach, but he's been trading on one-two good years here and accomplishments from nearly 20 years ago. Yesterday was really, really bad and it's perfectly reasonable to ask if he's the guy to get us to the next level. He hasn't accomplished anything thus far in which a couple of his predecessors haven't. It's not like it would be impossible to find another cat to do the same things he's done. That said, I'm not advocating firing him or anything, but I remain as I always have with Barnes, feeling like it should have been more than it was.

Wtf are you talking about?

Barnes has 3 consecutive trips to the NCAAT, maybe you want a refresh on your TNBB history to check and see how many times that has happened in UT history, watch out if he makes it 4 in a row next year lol
 

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