Ahead of Tennessee basketball's 2024-25 season, the Vols held their annual media day.

To kick things off, head coach Rick Barnes met with the media.

Here's everything he had to say.

TALK ABOUT IT IN THE ROCKY TOP FORUM

You know, I guess I would say, versatility maybe that we know we got different ways we can play with different lineups, big, small, somewhere in between, too. But, still trying to figure out what is the best way to go for the most part, but just really waiting to get everybody on the court together at the same time. But overall, in fact, I think we've got really good, terrific camaraderie within our team and we got a group of guys that you can tell they continue to wanna get better and everything that we're trying to do. And so the attitude has been been good but I do know they know after each scrimmage that we've gone out that we've got to continue to get better and we have gotten better from scrimmage to scrimmage but we still, like everybody, we have a way to go.

Well, normally, when he's really playing his best basketball, he doesn't he doesn't mess with the ball very much. You know, he gets to a shot, he gets where he needs to be. It's been a really, I think he would tell you a unique experience for him playing against a group of guys that that bring the energy and effort that. Jahmai and Zakai bring, you know, Jordan Gainey has been with it, too. And, the standard that those guys play with every day has probably been as big an experience for him as anything that he's gone through and he would tell you that. But, we need him to, you don't have to continue to do what he does, but do it at a much quicker pace.

Well, as you know, from day one, you know, it didn't take long before he established himself within our program with our team whether based the program or whatever that may be. I mean, it took him literally a week on campus four years ago to let everybody know that he was here to compete and play at the highest level. And what he does, day in and day out is what makes him highest level. And what he does, day in and day out is what makes him special. I mean, you all watch him through the years and the way he plays is the way he practices. He's extremely hard on himself, sometimes to a fault, but there's no one that wants to win and no one is gonna prepare any harder than Zakai. He's wanting to have a great year and not just individually, but one thing that defines him is he's want to win. And, I think he's done a really good job again with Jahmai and Jordan trying to get the younger players and the new guys to understand we've got some big holes to fill and we need those guys to play at an extremely high level.

I don't, you know, he's doing a little bit more each day. I don't know where he is in terms of he needs to have a good day then maybe you have a setback. You know, he we need him, but Chad has done a great job. I think of making sure that he'll be ready when time comes, but he's also a player that needs work and reps. And, so they're working him back into where he is, you know, starting to get up and down the floor, but I don't know how to answer where he'll be or when he'll be. It it just depends on how much he progresses over these next couple weeks.

No. I don't think anything he does. I mean, it's it's the expectation that he asked for himself and that we have for him every day. I mean, when he's has a tough day, he's so brutally hard on himself that sometimes he makes it even tougher than it needs to be, but he's just so competitive within himself and he wants to play the perfect game. I mean, he wants to do everything he can to get guys the ball where they need it. And I think when he gets himself in troubles, when he tries to take too much on by himself, but he really understands he's starting to more and more understand his teammates on this team. Like a year ago, he understood. I mean, quickly, they figured out how they need our team last year needed to play. This team is not quite there yet and I think the more that Zakai gets there, the other guys will follow his lead.

Again, just Chaz and JP. A week ago, week and a half ago, I think, we've had a little flu ran through the team and all that. But other than that, these guys have been pretty resilient. He just had inflamed, something on his foot that he, you know, he's been going in and out, bringing him back too slowly.

Felix is a great rim protector... We're talking. We talked about many times how two guys have competed against against each other every day for going on, it seems like forever. He, Felix and Cade go at each other in a extremely healthy way and they both have made each other better. Both of them, play by the rim, both of them are real lob threats, but both of them are shot blockers and then throw Igor, he's different than those two, but those two guys have so improved each other so much. And so we're different in the fact that we do have some legit lob threats. We have other guys that can do it, but to the extent of those two guys, not there, but other guys can do some things up on the front line in different ways. JP should be able to give us another guy that can do that once he gets back and can get his feedback and get where he can move at the pace that we're moving at right now as a team.

Not much. I really haven't thought about it. Again, any good thing that has happened to me has been a true blessing from God and the players that he's blessed me with to be around and I've always said the best part of this job is the daily interaction with players and watching them grow and be a part of it and I've just been so blessed throughout my career with so many wonderful players and coaches that have been with me. But, any individual award really when you're in a team sport comes from the the success of the team. But, again, I'm just blessed to be here and so many blessings with so many wonderful people in my life.

Well, there's really three. I mean, a list came out, someone told me last week that they rated three of our guys as the top three defensive players in the country and Jahmai and Z and Felix. And they definitely create some good situations for us on the other end and the question will be, and we talk about as a team, who's gonna keep coming to join that group because we need, because we lost two really good defenders in Santi and Josiah, and we need some other guys to really step in there and fill that void along with, really all the way down the line. I do think that Jordan has gotten much better defensively. We need some more, we need Cade to continue to improve there because what Josiah did defensively with his hands was something that we missed when he got his hands on so many balls and broke things away. And so we could get out and turn people over and we need to get that from not just our frontline guys, but our forward guys, as well.

Not where we need to be. Not where we need to be. Getting closer but not there yet. Guys understand to do the work early, can eliminate a lot of the problems. Too many guys still check out a little bit and are always playing catch up as opposed to doing the work early, knowing that something's gonna happen. And within our principles, it's hard to get to sometimes with the way we run our offense, but it can be done. But it's gotta be tough mentally. You gotta have some real cardio toughness and you gotta stay alert. And right now, we've got too many guys away from the ball, not staying in tune with the ball, a player watching probably more than anything and not reacting to the basketball.

Well, I do think the versatility and you know, we worked hard in a lot of different areas and we're really happy with where we're moving with our inside game and guys that we can before we can go up to. And people wanna play, you know, in the past, people pretty much said we're gonna let you play two-on-two with those, you know, with the kind of in the post guy. I think we made really good strides there because of how hard our post guys and you know what Zakai is gonna do. Jordan, another guy that, you know, that has really, in the last two weeks, he he got off to a great start this summer. You know, Bishop really was playing well, then Zakai came back and that's a whole new experience for him, having to deal with Zakai every single day. And the last two weeks, he's made as much strides defensively as anybody on our team and he's highly competitive. He wants to win. He's still trying to figure out what we're doing from an offensive situation. But defensively, his effort, his rebound and has been really impressive the last few weeks.

He's worked on it really for four years and, you know, he's a guy now that when he takes the shots that we know that he practices and gets set, we're really surprised that he misses them as long as he does what he practices. He's worked hard at it and we need him to do that. If he's open, he's worked hard enough to be a guy that we expect to shoot open shots when he gets them. He's done a good job. He really has. I think probably pretty much through the preseason, he's probably been our best consistent 3-point shooter overall.

I think you've got to coach everybody the same way, but it's obviously you're hoping with them being older that they can pick up things quicker. You hope that they've seen a lot of different things in their time in college basketball and we don't slow down. We're not going to wait really for anybody and we expect them to figure it out pretty quickly. We're going to do what we need to do from our end but we also expect them to do what they need to do from their film study, their individual film study and different things so they know coming in what the expectations are and what we expect from them. We always talk about versatility and being able to more positions you can play allows you to probably be able to get more minutes, we won the expectation. We don't lower the expectation for them. We've got a probably a higher bar than they've ever had, and we really expect them to live up to it.

You know, (Cam Carr) the other day shot the ball well. He's still some of the fundamental things he's got to continue to work with, but you know, a guy that what we, you know, when we look at his ability, we've got extremely high standards for him. He's a guy that we feel should be an outstanding defensive player. He's still got to take care of the ball better than than he does, but he's he's improved. I think Cam, over the last two and a half weeks, have have made strides to him. Really trying to simplify things, making it easier on himself by not trying to overdo things. We know that, again, he's one of those guys when he gets his feet set and not rushed, you know, he'll shoot the ball at a higher percentage, but he's no different than anybody else on our team right now. We talk about taking care of the ball and being able to finish the possession defensively and offensively the way we want to, and he is getting better. He isn't, but we need him to get there quicker and so we're gonna push him to get there.

Well, I like some of you guys (media members) better than I used to. That answer your question? No, I don't know if we've changed. We always adjust, I will say that. We're constantly adjusting, even a year ago. This time a year ago, we had no idea Dalton would do what he did. We knew that he had the ability offensively to do some things that we hadn't had, but where he was defensively, I mean, I'm telling you, I'd tell him, 'Hey, I don't care how many times you score the ball. If you're going to give up that many points, what are we doing here? We're just trading their baskets for their baskets.' You know what we did know was how hard he was willing to work. Players will make coaches adjust. Good players make coaches adjust, they will. It could happen this year. At the end of the year, we ended up doing things that we hadn't even thought about doing this time of year. But from the way the season settled in, the way we started growing as a team and where we started doing things, we added stuff to try to take advantage of different guys, and I would imagine that's going to happen with this team. I'm not sure exactly who with yet, but I know it needs to happen with this team, so we need some guys to show us consistently what we can count on every time they go out there and as a coaching staff, we'll make the necessary adjustments to take advantage of it.

– TALK ABOUT IT IN THE ROCKY TOP FORUM.

– ENJOY VOLREPORT WITH A PREMIUM SUBSCRIPTION.

– SUBSCRIBE TO THE VOLREPORT YOUTUBE CHANNEL.

– FOLLOW VOLREPORT ON TWITTER: @TennesseeRivals, @ByNoahTaylor, @RyanTSylvia, @Dale_Dowden, @ShayneP_Media.