Tennessee practiced for the first time ahead of the 2021-22 basketball season on Wednesday.
Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes met with media and discussed the upcoming season. Below is a transcript of Barnes’ media availability provided by the University of Tennessee.
On if he can believe that basketball season is almost here:
“It’s hard to believe really, but it’s been fun. It was really fun to get to as normal as we could be. The best part of that has really been the time we got to spend with the players, being able to utilize the time we haven’t prepped together but then go downstairs in the locker room. It’s two of the most important places that we can be together and that part has been really fun. We have a good group of guys, we have half the team who are freshmen. The older guys have done a really good job showing these guys the way, but it’s just been fun to really get back to normal.”
On how the new additions are fitting in with the team:
“Like you would expect, they’ve all had good days, they’ve all had some days where they’ve been up and down. The attitude has never wavered. They all want to because they are willing to learn, they’re finding out there’s things with the game of basketball that they’ve never, they might have heard of it, but they didn’t understand the importance of it. They understand how you have to learn how to play when you’re tired, learn how to execute, learn how to respond as opposed to reacting when things aren’t going well. Overall, they’ve been good. Like I’ve said, they’ve all had good days. Some days, right now, yesterday was a different day for them in terms of tempo, the speed of our practices and how we expect to move from one thing to the next. But overall, they’ve handled it really quite well.”
NEXT: Rick Barnes’ media availability continued