Tennessee’s men’s basketball team returned to action Saturday for its second game of the 2020-21 season.
The Vols (2-0) defeated Cincinnati, 65-56, at Thompson-Boling Arena.
Following the contest, Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes recapped the Vols’ performance against Cincinnati. Below is a transcript provided by the University of Tennessee.
On both the team’s rebounding and Fulkerson’s performance:
“We have a different team in terms of we do think that we have multiple guys that can drive the ball, and we haven’t had a lot of that in the past couple of years. We’ve played two teams now, for foul trouble reasons, that have had to go to zone probably more so than they both want to play. We haven’t had a lot of time to work against a lot of different type zones, but today what we simply said was, ‘Hey, we’re going to attack. We’re going to get in there.’ We missed some shots that we feel we normally make. We felt like we turned down some shots from the perimeter. Yet, we talk about a lot. We want our team to have an identity of rebounding, and that means getting a good shot up on the glass and going to get it and trying to get multiple shots at it. Coming down the stretch, Fulky did do a good job. He wasn’t very good early. He wasn’t locked in defensively at the start of the game. I took him out early because he didn’t block out, and that’s something we said early. We’re going to hold everybody accountable. You’re going to block out. You’re going to rebound the ball. We subbed a couple of times for guys that were going the other way before we had the ball, but he did answer coming down the stretch. I think our guys understand what. We’re trying to do at the end of the game. In the last two games, we’re able to make the free throws. We did a good job taking care of the ball, but there’s a couple that we gave them that turned into pick-sixes. There’s nothing we can do with that. You take away three or four plays defensively where we gambled in the backcourt and let them go all the way. Overall, I would say we were pretty good defensively. We played hard defensively without fouling.”