Tennessee (7-1, 1-1 SEC) suffered its first loss of the 2020-21 season Saturday at Thompson-Boling Arena.
Alabama defeated the Vols, 71-63.
Following the loss, Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes met with media and discussed his team’s performance against the Crimson Tide.
Below is a transcript provided by the University of Tennessee.
On John Fulkerson and Josiah-Jordan James impact in tonight’s game:
“They did exactly what we thought they would do. Get Fulky out there and get matchups with him there where we knew they were going to try to drive and make him play defense. We knew that was going to happen. Offensively, he never established what we needed to get done. We got the ball there, but he went three-for-eight from the free throw line. That is tough when you got a guy, you’re counting on to give you something around the rim or get you there. I thought Josiah tried to do what he needed to do. At the end we had to just get a group of guys out there that we felt could guard, because we did not do a very good job of that. With all that said and done, offensively we were terrible to start the game. We turned the ball over three times to start it, travel calls, falling over ourselves. Santi gets stripped but give Alabama all the credit. There was nothing that they did that we didn’t talk about for a couple of days and what we needed to do. We didn’t stop it. We knew they would shoot threes. In the second half they shot 8-of-11. Our offense was terrible. Again, give them credit for that. I thought Yves not being in the game really hurt us. I thought that was a big thing, because he’s a difference maker out there. He had a couple of tough calls that went against him, but I really thought he made good plays. Jaden would thrive in a game like this and him not being there—even with all that said and done at the end of the game, if we had taken care of the ball and made a couple of shots, we had a chance. They were missing their free throws and gave us a chance, but we didn’t get it done. You have to give them credit, they came in and had a plan, they worked it better than we worked ours.”