KNOXVILLE – Playing basketball on the outdoor courts in The Bronx in New York City, where he grew up, or lighting up the junior college circuit in Missouri or debuting in the Southeastern Conference, Kevin Punter shot the ball the same way thousands of times.
Those all went out of the window on the first day of June this year.
And yes, Punter, the Tennessee senior guard, can remember the exact date that new coach Rick Barnes approached him about changing his shooting motion.
“I got here with that shot,” Punter told the Times Free Press at the Volunteers’ media day last month.
“I knew my shot wasn’t the prettiest, to be honest with you. But it always went in. When he wanted to change it, I wasn’t really up for it. A bunch of stuff was going through my head, like I’m 22 years old – it’s a little bit too late. I’m not trying to think about my shot. I’m worried about other stuff.
“But everything happens for a reason. I ended up sticking with (the change) and staying the process, and it’s worked out pretty good.”
Punter’s new shot is one of the many new things with Tennessee basketball, which opens the season tonight at home against UNC Asheville.
Barnes and his staff are new. The new court at Thompson-Boling Arena now features the lettering font Tennessee adopted when it switched to Nike this summer. There are four freshmen and a junior college transfer.
The expectations are the same – the Vols are picked to finish 12th in the SEC after being picked 13th last season – but there are new go-to guys, with Punter and Armani Moore set to share the burden Josh Richardson carried last season before heading to the NBA.
In his first season with the Vols, Punter averaged 10.3 points per game, but he shot just 42 percent from the field and 35 percent on 3-pointers.
When Punter returned to Knoxville after spending a month at home, Barnes gave him a suggestion he wasn’t expecting.
“Not one coach ever in my life that has seen me shoot, that has recruited me, that has coached me, has ever said anything about my shot – anything,” Punter said. “For Coach to say something and really want to make that change, that just shows you he’s all for skill development and developing and becoming a great player.”
Punter isn’t the only player adjusting something he’s probably done the same way for his entire basketball career. Moore, Devon Baulkman and Shembari Phillips all have had their shooting forms tweaked. Jabari McGhee is shooting free throws differently.
“I came in,” the freshman Phillips said, “and Coach Barnes told me I was a good shooter, but (he said) we’re going to turn you into a good maker. I thought I was a pretty good shooter until he showed me some things. I realized there are some things that can actually make my shot a lot better.”
Phillips joked that his first thought was that Barnes was telling him he couldn’t shoot.
And he’s just starting his collegiate career, while Punter is into his final season of eligibility.
“Every time we’ve talked to a guy or tweaked a guy about his shot or what he needs work on,” Barnes said, “we’ve said to them, ‘We can’t do this. You’ve got to want to do this, and it’s not going to be easy.’ If you really got Kevin nailed down, he would tell you it was very frustrating. He’s like, ‘I’m trying, Coach.’ I said, ‘No, you’ve got to do this.’
“It was many, many hours literally standing five feet in front of the rim, just getting him to do it. It was hard. It was hard, but I told him, ‘You’ve got to do this. You’ve got to do it.'”
Punter couldn’t guess how many shots he took with his new form, how many hours he spent practicing it or even “how many times I wanted to punch a wall.”
He admitted there were times he wanted to quit and just stick with his old form, which he can’t even replicate now.
All the work paid off as the new motion, in which Punter doesn’t lean back as much and keeps the ball more above his head, has become second nature.
The results this preseason have been good, and Punter and the Vols hope it continues when the games start counting tonight.
“It’s part of me now,” he said last week. “If someone asked me, ‘Did you always shoot like that?’ I’d tell them, ‘Yeah.’ I feel like I’ve been shooting like that forever.”
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.