Rick Barnes Comments To Officials And Altercation With Purdue Zach Edey After The Loss.
Tennessee basketball saw its season come to an end with a 72-66 loss to No. 1 Purdue in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament on Easter Sunday.
The Vols struggled to contain Purdue center Zach Edey, who scored 40 points to lead the Boilermakers to the Final Four for the first time since 1980. Edey shot 13-of-21 from the floor and drew 16 fouls to shoot 14-of-22 at the free throw line.
He committed just one foul in 39 minutes and grabbed five offensive rebounds, dished out an assist, tallied a steal and blocked a shot.
Edey’s performance over-shadowed a 37-point performance from Tennessee star guard Dalton Knecht in his final game as a Vol. Knecht shot 14-of-31 from the floor and 6-of-12 from three in 37 minutes. He grabbed three rebounds, dished out an assist and picked up a steal.
Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes met with the media following the game to discuss what went wrong in the season-ending loss. Here’s everything Barnes had to say.
BARNES: Congratulations to Purdue. Both teams fought hard. I thought our guys really put up a battle. We were playing against a guy that has a unique game certainly.
I think Matt Painter has done a great job with continuing to build this team and grow them in areas to give them a chance now to be part of the Final Four and play for a National Championship.
Not just what he does when he posts up, the way he really gets your defense distorted and everything, but the way their team knows how to get it to him, different angles, different times. Again, just congratulations to them.
I can’t tell you how much and how special this team was for us as a coaching staff to coach. The tough part is when you know where we started five years ago with Josiah-Jordan and Santiago with a class behind them to where we are today.
I think when people think of college basketball, they know that Tennessee is going to be in the fight.
The hardest thing is when it ends and we have a special year with a special guy like Dalton coming into the program. Certainly I’ve said no one’s changed our program more than Zakai Zeigler.
His DNA has changed everything. That’s the tough part of where we are right now. Just a blessing of having a chance to be with a group of guys.
They set out to win a National Championship, play on Monday. I can tell you this, when they look back on it, right now it’s very difficult, but they’ll look back and know they went after it and have no regrets.
Again, I wish I could change the outcome for them, but the fact that God has blessed me with the time I’ve had with these guys, it’s something I wish every coach can enjoy.
BARNES: One, you’ve got a very unique player in Zach Edey, very unique. It’s a hard game to officiate. Space on the court is so important, and depending on how a guy gets there and you try to keep him from getting there and the effort that goes into that oftentimes can get one guy in particular there out of position to where he can maybe help on some other different things.
He’s an extremely physical player, does a great job wedging with his body. I thought all along his misses are the hardest thing to defend because he does lead strong. He’ll bounce you off and try to create a crack and step through it. That’s where he’s improved so much with his footwork.
I think it’s hard for officials because there’s not many guys like that. The game has changed so much through the years. Whether you stay in the lane three seconds or you don’t, if you don’t ever get out, it really distorts everything.
I’m not saying he did or he didn’t, but watching tape, he’s a difficult guy to officiate, I can tell you that. He’s an extremely difficult guy to guard because, again, knowing where he wants the ball. And he’s got a group of guys around it that know how to get it to him at the right time.
As much as you try to scheme to get guys down there to try to take some space away, all you can do is go down and dig at it and try to help — hope you can come up with some deflections.