After five cancellations, Tennessee will open the 2020-21 men’s basketball season Tuesday.
The Vols will play Colorado at Thompson-Boling Arena. Tipoff is slated for 6 p.m. EST at Thompson-Boling Arena and the game will be streamed on SEC Network+.
Ahead of Tuesday’s game, Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes met with media and discussed the matchup. Below is a transcript provided by the University of Tennessee.
Kns Vols Bball 1113
On how far behind the team is after missing the first few games of the season:
“I think we’re behind, because like I said earlier, we had a chance to go up and down the floor three times in two weeks leading into tomorrow. I do think the older guys can handle it, more so than the younger guys. Our younger guys, the stops and starts have definitely affected them more in terms of their recall and being able to understand what we’re doing. Overall, I’ve got to think that these guys, I know they’re excited about playing. We got back early Friday and we went twice that day just to break it up, because we knew they would struggle with stamina. It’s just a tough practice when you’ve been off two weeks. They handled it well, and then we found out that the game with (UT) Martin would be canceled. By the next morning, we were in contact with Colorado and knew that maybe that was a possibility, so we had to readjust our schedule as opposed to practicing Friday and Saturday. We had to flip it where we little very little at all on Saturday, even though the game wasn’t totally submitted yet, to put us on our two-day prep that we like to do throughout the season. We are on schedule to that. This is the first time our young guys have gone through this. Normally, by now we would’ve had a two-day prep to get ready for an exhibition game. We don’t have any of that, and because of that we haven’t had the whole team on the bench together. Tomorrow, all that is going to be new to those guys. Even though we had started preparing prior to the shutdown to get ready for Charlotte and VCU. Today is actually the first time we have been able to do what we normally would do, and tomorrow will be the first time that we’ve had our whole team together on the same bench. Our substitutions, we can think about it, we don’t know how it’s going to play out. We don’t know foul situations, so our older guys will handle it better than you would expect, but the younger guys are going to have to learn on the fly. They’re going to be nervous. They don’t know exactly what to expect. We appreciate Colorado doing what they’re doing for us, and we were able to put this together quickly and we have a lot of respect.”
On if he will have everyone available for the game vs. Colorado:
“We’ll have two guys that won’t be playing. Corey Walker and Drew Pember.”