Why Vols assistant feels 'sense of comfort' in new role on staff

John Adams | Knoxville

Mike Wilson, USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee

Brianna Paciorka/News Sentinel

Tennessee fans already are getting pumped up for Sunday's basketball game against No. 1 Gonzaga in Phoenix. And you can’t blame them.

That’s just the kind of game they deserve. Moreover, this is just the kind of basketball team UT fans deserve. It’s talented, deep, well-coached and unselfish.

I was a sports columnist in Jackson, Miss., the first time I covered a UT men’s basketball game. That was in 1979 when the Vols still played in Stokely Arena.

Other than Kentucky’s Rupp Arena, I had never experienced an SEC basketball venue where fans were so impassioned about basketball.

The passion has ebbed and flowed through the years. It’s peaking again now under coach Rick Barnes, with a top-10 matchup looming ahead, but it never went away. It just needed a coach and team to rekindle it.

It was rekindled 13 years ago this month when Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl’s first UT team played Barnes’ sixth-ranked Texas team in Austin. Who could have guessed at the time that Pearl and Barnes would both revive Tennessee basketball?

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Bruce Pearl through the years

UT’s upset of Texas was the first sign that Pearl might lift the program from four years of mediocrity. Pearl took Tennessee to six consecutive NCAA tournaments before he was fired for NCAA violations.

Barnes goes about his basketball business differently than Pearl. He’s not a charismatic personality. He’s not a constant promoter. But in his three-plus seasons at Tennessee, he has proved he knows how to build a team and a program — as he did at Texas and Clemson.

Fans now appreciate Barnes just as they did Pearl, and as they once appreciated the late Ray Mears, who made Tennessee basketball so prominent in the early 1960s through the late 1970s.

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Tennessee Vols coach Rick Barnes through the years in photos

Mears excelled as a teacher, strategist and promoter. He did more than anyone to make Tennessee fans care so much about basketball.

He also provided fans a model of what an exceptional coach can build. Older fans haven’t forgotten that. Moreover, they seemingly have passed on their affinity for the model to younger fans.

Many Tennessee fans expect the game to be coached and played a certain way. That’s why they weren’t as enthralled with coach Jerry Green’s winning teams in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

That’s also one of the reasons why they embraced the 2017-18 Vols, who tied for the SEC championship. The current team is a more experienced version of that one, better equipped to make a deeper run in the NCAA tournament.

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In this one-and-done era of college basketball, experience is sometimes devalued. Talent overrides experience, but both are sometimes required to produce a championship team.

You can see how attuned UT’s players are to one another. That’s what experience can do. They also know exactly what to expect from Barnes, a demanding, no-nonsense coach who doesn’t seem to compromise his basketball standards regardless of the score.

Non-conference scores matter so much more in March than in November and December, but games like the one against Gonzaga — and an overtime loss to No. 2 Kansas last month — can provide a glimpse of what March could be.

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Photos: Tennessee Vols vs Kansas Jayhawks in the NIT Tip-off

UT fans experienced that last season when the Vols upset Purdue in the Bahamas in November. And they experienced the same unexpected joy 13 years ago when Pearl’s Vols and Barnes’ Longhorns.

Even more surprising, both Pearl and Barnes would end up giving Tennessee fans a team worthy of their passion for basketball.

John Adams is a senior columnist. He may be reached at 865-342-6284 or john.adams@knoxnews.com. Follow him at: twitter.com/johnadamskns.

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News Sentinel sports writer John Adams through the years