Following a late-game loss to Alabama, Tennessee will return to their top two players Wednesday night when the Vols host Ole Miss. Today Rick Barnes met with the media to discuss his squad and more ahead of the game. You can see the full transcript below and the video from the press conference above. Both are courtesy of the Tennessee Athletics Department of Communications.

On the performance of freshman Zakai Zeigler in Alabama…

“We have a lot of confidence in Zakai because the only thing we know is that he’s going to do what he does every day in training. What you see him do in the game is is what he does everyday. He is not afraid. He is going to go for it. I think he is a player who is able to let mistakes happen very quickly and keep competing. When you play as hard as him, and he really tries to get all the possessions on both sides is what the coaches want and it gives you a lot of confidence. When you have a guy like that you realize let him give you everything he has. That’s why you want him there. “

If he likes intrepid leaders …

“Absolutely, they have to be in so many different ways. They have a tough job because defensively they’re being asked to do a lot. They’re going to be hit a lot, especially in today’s game with a lot of screens from bullet. Then you expect them to perform your attack for you. That’s a lot that you put on them. He did a terrific job coming in here a week after school started and getting the system back. had a day off yesterday and i came in, i walked into the pratt lodge and he was in the gym with one of the coaches, working alone. thats the kind of person he is and the kind of player that he is. We keep telling him what he needs to do to get better and he works at it, even in his free time. It’s beyond what we ask him to do.

On the confidence he thinks some players have gained by having to replace Kennedy Chandler and John Fulkerson in Alabama …

“I think the key was, once these guys fell down, we didn’t say, ‘Hey, we don’t have Fulkerson. “We really have the mentality that with what we have we are going to play and we believe in it today. With the squad we have we could have won the game. Once we found out that these guys did We weren’t going to play, we didn’t care much about that. We said, ‘Okay, we’re putting our game plan in place. That’s what we’re going to do.’ We came in hoping to win. We saw it happen. The only thing, as coaches, that we talked about was, if you think back to last year and the game with Vanderbilt there, they had two players absent., (Scotty) Pippen Jr. and (Dylan) Disu. They played well because the guys who didn’t have an opportunity (now have a chance.) Again, I think that every guy that we have, we recruited. We believe in them. We just know that, yes, some of them are still learning what it is. But overall the work that they have put in when given the opportunity, I think everyone did a good job with it. “

On execution at the end of the match …

“When we were six we had three bad possessions in a row. We took two quick shots in transition that we shouldn’t have taken out of the three when we weren’t balanced and one shot from mid-range that We should And that was a time when Santi wasn’t in the game either where I think he would have controlled it a bit more, but those three possessions for us as staff were the three biggest possessions in the game. Even if at the end we have to give them the credit for having scored as they did at the end of the first half and at the end of the game. You know, we had two breakdowns, we had one in the zone, late, and we had a bullet screen failure. When we had those three possessions out there, when we didn’t really work the game like we should have. , we really let it slip away. “

On the evolution of structures to reduce the impact of COVID …

“No, not really. You know, we went through this a year ago and it was really tough and again our guys did a great job. In the last couple of days they’ve all gone to do each other. vaccinate and stuff. We’re trying to do what we’ve done so far. What we need, we just need to make sure our guys know when they come out of this building, they make good decisions about where where they go and the things they do because it’s all going to affect us in some way if you put yourself in a position where you’re exposed to a lot of people that you don’t know. really think about where we are today and everything that’s going on with COVID. That’s what we have to ask them to do, to fix when they come out of this building. “

On what he saw Uros Plavsic in the cinema …

“He did a really good job. He worked his tail on the boards, and he did the same during our break. He tried to come down, and he’s the guy who mainly created a lot of angles for Zakai. He played hard, and again there is a great example: I think the more he plays the more he will do what we want him to do, especially when he gets the ball back. Has to be a factor around. rim. We are not asking him to block a lot of shots, we are asking him to get into a position to affect the shots. Whether it’s taking a load or going straight up with both hands and making the guys are scoring against him, but those are the areas where he needs to improve. “

Who is the best 3-point shooter in Tennessee …

“Well I mean you look at the numbers, I would say this team, we talked about our shot percentages right now and tried to show the guys the difference between a good and a bad shot in terms of balance. . You know I can tell you this, Santi is obviously a guy who can shoot basketball, but he’s better guarded than anyone on the court. Zakai is a guy who can really shoot it, if you were going every day and had a shooting competition, I mean those two guys would be there. Josiah is a guy who when he’s got his balance and he’s shooting rhythmic shots, I think he’s a 44% 3-point shooter. When he’s forcing it and it’s not balanced, that’s where it is right now. After we showed him that the very next day in practice I think he was 6 for 8 from the 3 point line because you know he was making smooth, rhythmic shots. Justin Powell, same thing, if he puts his feet under him. I think we have guys who can shoot it, I think one of the reasons our percentages aren’t what they should be, we didn’t take those shots the way we trained. . Unbalanced, don’t do our job early, anxious, because you didn’t. It’s a lot the mental side. Olivier is a great shooter, but you can see it in the game when he gets anxious, he misses one and says, “Well, I have to do the next one,” and it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s part of the fact that some of these guys are here for the first time, but I think we have guys who can shoot the ball. But if you ask me at the end of who we are preparing the games for, I think it will depend on the game and who is guarded by whom. ”

On what Ole Miss brings defensively …

“Kermit Davis, he’s a great coach and he does a really good job mixing his defenses. From his man down to his 1-3-1, 2-3 he’s always changing things up trying to keep you out of rhythm. , keep going you’re off balance. Working the game and last year there they recently did the 1-3-1. Basically putting three guys on the ball trying to trap. Getting very aggressive. We don’t didn’t handle that very well and with all of that said and done that night we weren’t very good from the free throw line and we were getting the ball pitches we wanted but we got nothing could do with. Kermit Davis is doing a great job, he’s going to work hard to put his players in a position to give them a chance to succeed. If you look at his teams in the past, he’s been consistent with his men’s defense, his 1- 3-1, back to a 2-3. Up, maybe on a missed shot he’ll go dude, on a successful shot he could go 2 -3, outside of the timeouts he will go 1-3-1 get him to the baseline he kind of rolls in a 2-3 They can stay with him too like he did there one year with the 1-3-1. “

If Justin Powell’s playing time is linked to defense …

“Yeah. You know we have a very high standard. Here’s what I’m trying to get all these guys to understand, we go into this movie theater and when you watch a play while we’re sitting there as that team. It’s hard for a player to watch that sometimes, because it’s not me, it’s just a movie showing it to them. You watch two or three guys over there maximizing other guys. It’s not just Justin, there were parts that we showed the last game where Zakai as far as he’s playing maybe doing what he has to do on a procession. Or it’s Santiago (Vescovi) on a block. Nobody’s perfect, but what we’re trying to get is we’re trying to get as many guys on the same page as possible. more important is that they understand that we’re in a possession league if the teams play well. Think about it, we’ve played three games where it’s been. it’s only one possession -game, we are 1-2 in these games. You come back, these two games we looked good enough to win the game or set ourselves up, so making the guys understand that every possession counts is a big, big thing. It can happen when we were six, we had three bad possessions in a row in attack. Same thing in defense, you score a basket, you come back and give up two consecutive baskets because you do not get the right angle in defense. Again, I’m not just talking about Justin, I’m talking about anyone on our team. It’s about consistency, it’s about who can we count on at different times. All the guys have to do a better job with their passes. Justin, we need him, we need him badly. We need them all to be ready because who knows where we are this year with COVID, we are seeing it, we are seeing it happening, we have to have everyone ready to play. “

If playing without Kennedy Chandler and John Fulkerson will benefit Tennessee in the future…

“Well you like to think about every game you do, yeah. I think we have a confident squad, our guys are working hard and they have to expect good things. We keep talking about you have to be better. We have to train every day like every possession counts, like every day counts. These guys as a group, they work hard and they did the things that we asked them to do. We can improve a lot. Can we play without some guys? I think we can. I said at the start of the year, we have quality depth and it’s up to them to make us use that depth. The way they do it, it’s up to them to make us use that depth. is that they show every day that they’re ready to buy exactly what we need them to do and if all the guys on this team do, we’re going to be up against 10 or 11 guys. “