KNOXVILLE – Come this evening, Rick Barnes will have experienced both sides of the fledgling Big 12-SEC Challenge.
Tennessee’s first-year coach wasn’t a fan of the men’s basketball event when he was at Texas.
Now he’s not thrilled about the timing of it.
The Volunteers are eight games into their conference schedule, but Tennessee and nine other Southeastern Conference teams will take a brief respite from the grind of league play to square off against the loaded Big 12 today. Tennessee tips off at TCU at 2:05 p.m. EST.
“I think this is where (on the calendar) ESPN wanted to have it. I can tell you, when we were at Texas, I wasn’t in favor of it,” Barnes, who coached the Longhorns the past 17 seasons, said Monday. “We played a great nonleague schedule, and we didn’t need to have a Challenge. The thought there was there are 10 of us, and the league here has 14 of them. How do you get a real Challenge out of that?
“This time of year, it could be an open week to allow your team, if you’ve got injuries or you like to rest them a little bit, you’ve got a week to do that. Nonetheless, it’s been good. You take a poll of where the Big 12 is right now and the Southeastern Conference – but I think it’s great for our league right now. We’ve got a chance, if you think about it, as a league to do some things special.”
The second all-time meeting between Tennessee and TCU (the Horned Frogs won the first in 1991) is on the undercard of the Challenge, which is headlined by No. 1 Oklahoma’s trip to face Ben Simmons and LSU, No. 20 Kentucky and No. 4 Kansas clashing in a battle of basketball bluebloods and a top-15 matchup between No. 14 Iowa State and No. 5 Texas A&M.
In the other matchups, Florida (vs. No. 9 West Virginia), Arkansas (vs. Texas Tech) and Auburn (vs. Oklahoma State) are at home, while Vanderbilt (vs. Texas), Georgia (vs. No. 17 Baylor) and Ole Miss (vs. Kansas State) are on the road.
The Big 12-SEC Challenge is in its third season. The Big 12 won seven of 10 games in 2014 and went 6-4 last season. Under Barnes, the Longhorns split their two games against the SEC, beating visiting Vanderbilt 70-64 in 2014 and losing 63-51 at No. 1 Kentucky last season.
After not participating in the inaugural event in 2014, Tennessee beat Kansas State at home last season behind Josh Richardson’s 17 points and Armani Moore’s stat-stuffing effort.
All those previous games, though, came in December, a month before the two leagues started conference play.
The four SEC teams not part of this year’s Challenge are playing league games, with Alabama at South Carolina and Mississippi State visiting Missouri.
“The reason it is right now is just ESPN,” Barnes said. “They just got through with the football playoffs, the NFL’s getting ready to go (with the Super Bowl) in two weeks. Here’s a great week to have it. They get to do that. This is something that they can really promote, too.
“It’s a great opportunity for our league to let people see we’ve got a good league. It’s a good league, and everybody’s beating up on everybody right now. It is what it is and we’ve got to play it.”
The Vols have to play it coming off a brutal loss at Alabama on Tuesday with a visit from Kentucky looming.
During Wednesday’s day off, five players went to the East Tennessee Children’s Hospital to visit with patients and five others spent time at an after-school program interacting with kids. The Vols then got back to work on Thursday and Friday before flying to Texas.
“We definitely can’t linger on this loss,” Moore told the Vol Network radio broadcast after the loss in Tuscaloosa. “We have to put this one behind us and get ready for TCU. We’ve got another great team ahead of us.
“We just can’t think about it. We’ve got to watch film and recognize the mistakes we made in this game (like) poor shot selection, didn’t get back on defense there in a stretch where they got wide-open layups in transition. We’ve just got to get ready to play TCU.”
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.