With Tennessee having earned a double bye into Friday’s quarterfinal round of the Southeastern Conference men’s basketball tournament in Nashville, sixth-year Volunteers coach Rick Barnes has extra time to build on Sunday afternoon’s 65-54 victory over Florida that completed a 17-7 regular season.
One couldn’t fault Barnes for reflecting this week as well, as the coronavirus pandemic ended his fifth season earlier than expected and has affected his current team as well.
Tennessee is the fourth seed in this year’s extravaganza but was seeded eighth a year ago, when the Vols had a Thursday lunchtime tip against ninth-seeded Alabama. Vols players and their Crimson Tide counterparts had dressed for the clash, but SEC commissioner Greg Sankey canceled the game and the tournament roughly an hour before the matchup.
“It was a scary and unknown time for all of us, because we weren’t sure what to make of COVID,” Barnes said recently on a Zoom call. “When things started happening quickly at the end of the year, and with the reaction of the NBA, I thought we were headed there, too. I remember going into the arena that day strongly feeling we shouldn’t be doing it, because I just felt like there was so much unknown. I felt like we did the right thing as a league at that time and college basketball did the right thing.
“Do we know more now than we did a year ago? We do. We have learned a lot from other pro sports and going through it ourselves with intercollegiate athletics – not just football and basketball, but other things. We are now more prepared to handle things.”