Tennessee Coach Rick Barnes Talks What He Learned About His Team In Loss vs Auburn

Tennessee head basketball coach Rick Barnes talked about what he learned about his Volunteers basketball team following the 2-pt road loss to the No. 1 ranked Auburn Tigers.

Tennessee allowed a late 3-pointer that ended up being the difference in a hard-fought 53-51 loss to No. 1 Auburn on Saturday night in A rowdy Neville Arena. The 2-pt loss to the Tigers on their home court is about arguably the most “quality” loss in all of college basketball, and there’s plenty to learn about from the loss.

Here’s what head coach Rick Barnes had to say about the lessons learned from this loss:

“I love this team. I told our guys, you know what, we can get so much better too. That’s what I learned tonight. And again, we battled a great basketball team and a team that is extremely well coached and I didn’t think the crowd affected us. And I give that credit to our older guys, especially Mashack. I mean, he’s the only guy that played here, on this team. No one else on our team had been in this building. Zakai that was the year he got hurt and I mean, Zakai was just, what can I say about him? Just what he does and how he plays and he’s such a heartbeat of our team and what he does. But I’m just proud of every guy. I just thought that we came in and battled the No. 1 ranked team in the country. Took it down to the last possession with a chance to win it.”