During Tennessee's loss to Texas A&M on Saturday, Vols head coach Rick Barnes was not happy with the officiating.
This boiled over when Aggies head coach Buzz Williams ran onto the court to call a timeout. To Barnes, this is a safety issue that should not be accepted.
Despite Barnes' wishes, there was no in-game repercussion for Williams and the game moved on.
A few days later, Barnes met with the media and fielded questions on what transpired in College Station.
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His reaction to William's timeout
Barnes: "It can’t happen. I mean the most important thing is player safety. And when people are on the floor that’s not supposed to be, a coach, anyone, you can’t do that. And obviously, it wasn’t handled the right way by the officials. But I can assure you it’s been addressed long before I even talked about it. I have so much respect for our conference and Mike Eades who’s in charge of officiating. I can assure you he took care of it probably before we walked off the court."
His conversation with the SEC office
Barnes: "Well, to be honest with you, they reached out first. Not just to me, to everyone. I mean, coaches can’t do that. We know it. The box is there and I don’t have a problem with coaches, with the game going on, walking down closer to mid court, trying to get his team to pay attention. I don’t think any coach has a problem with that. But you can’t go out on the court. I mean, everybody knows that and you just can’t do it. And like I said, I appreciate, again, before I even got to the plane, I’d gotten a text saying that it was not handled the right way."
His conversation with the officials on the floor
Barnes: "(Pat Adams) said he was going to handle it, but he didn’t handle it the right way. I mean, officials are just like players and coaches — we all make mistakes. And afterwards, you like to think that officials not just in that game, but officials around the country learn from it. It can’t happen. You can’t ever let somebody run out on the floor while the game’s going on in the flow because, I mean, Tobe (Awaka), I think he dodged it and you can’t do that. I guess what I’ll start telling my players, if somebody’s on the floor, just run over them because that way it’s an obvious technical foul. But you don’t want to do that. I don’t want to see anybody get hurt, but it just can’t happen. It simply can’t happen."
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