March Madness: How much blame for Vols’ loss falls on Rick Barnes?
There are two trains of thought on Twitter after Tennessee basketball was eliminated from March Madness with a 76-68 loss to the Michigan Wolverines Saturday. One takes their NCAA Tournament Round of 32 matchup in a vacuum. The other looks at the overall picture. Both center around Rick Barnes.
From a macro perspective, it’s hard to argue blaming Barnes. After all, he has consistently underperformed in the NCAA Tournament. All four times UT has made it under him, they have lost to a lower seed and failed to advance to the round they were projected to.
It’s hard to argue in defense of a .500 March Madness record, only one win over a higher seed in over 20 NCAA Tournament appearances, reaching the second weekend just once in the past 14 years. All of that works against Barnes.
Still, anybody who saw the game Saturday would know the main reason the Vols lost was out of Barnes’ hands. Michigan’s defense ran a mix of man and zone that focused on denying the three-ball and using its bigs to shut off the paint.
Barnes smartly had his players go to the midrange then, and Kennedy Chandler and Josiah-Jordan James exploited that with 19 and 13 points respectively. That forced Juwan Howard to force Michigan’s zone to collapse more, which opened up the three-ball.
The Vols took those three-point shots. They just didn’t fall. In just a day of bad luck, their red-hot shooting the past five games finally ran out, and they weren’t able to buy a bucket from outside, going 2-of-18. You can’t put that on Barnes. The looks were there because of his midrange strategy, but the shots didn’t fall.
However, even just looking at that March Madness game in a vacuum, you still have to put some blame on Barnes. Yes, the Vols couldn’t buy a three. However, in what was expected to be a low-scoring game, they allowed Michigan to score 76 points.
This is where there is blame. Howard adjusted his offensive game plan to deal with Barnes and make sure he could dominate inside with Hunter Dickinson and Moussa Diabate. Barnes had no answer, as those two finished with 27 and 13 points respectively.
To be fair, there was no answer for Eli Brooks going off for 23 points. Barnes trusted James to handle him, and there was nothing James could do. Brooks just made every tough shot possible in crunch tie, and there was no defense for it.
The main problem was the Vols’ lack of ability to deny the bigs from getting the ball. This was a unique matchup for them. Although they hadn’t lost to a team not in the top 30 in the KenPom Adjusted Defensive Efficiency Ratings with Chandler and John Fulkerson on the floor all year, they hadn’t dealt with a team as big as Michigan.
UT needed to force as many turnovers as possible on the perimeter but also find every way possible to keep Dickinson from touching the ball. The move was to focus a bit more on tempo and controlled chaos, similar to the Tom Davis pressing style of coaching Barnes learned about when coaching under Gary Williams.
Instead, he stuck with his standard defense. It worked to a degree, forcing 15 turnovers, but it wasn’t enough down low. This was where Barnes messed up, and it’s why he has an issue losing to lower-seeded teams in Mach Madness.
In the NCAA Tournament, you’re going to have games where you have bad matchups and things don’t fall your way. The Vols had a bad matchup on the inside, their shots weren’t falling, and Michigan had a red-hot guard who could close.
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Moments like those are where coaching adjustments to find other advantages are crucial in March Madness. That’s where the mistake came in. Barnes didn’t make key adjustments on defense. Howard made adjustments on both sides of the ball. As a result, a team that gave up less than 63 points a game all year gave up 76.