Fire Rick Barnes? Are you crazy?
I remember what Tennessee basketball life was like before The Deacon
February 26, 1994.
That day probably doesn’t stand out for many people, but it does for me. It’s the day I attended my first University of Tennessee basketball game.
Tennessee hosted South Carolina at Thompson-Boling Arena that day, and lost, 72-64.
I won’t pretend to actually remember the date without looking it up — it was a Saturday afternoon late in the season — but I remember the game well.
Announced attendance inside Tennessee’s mammoth, 25,000-seat arena was about 3,500. What I remember most is the tiny group of South Carolina fans who made the trip, sitting in the upper levels and making more noise than the orange-clad faithful who bothered to show up to watch the Vols that day. Knoxville News Sentinel columnist John Adams commented on that fact in the next day’s newspaper.
It was a dreadful season for Tennessee basketball. Allan Houston — the coach’s son — was gone to the NBA after a fantastic career, and Corey Allen and Lang Wiseman were also gone. Still, the Vols’ roster wasn’t completely talent-deprived. Future NBA players Ed Gray and Steve Hamer were on the team. So was sophomore guard LaMarcus Golden and a trio of talented juniors in Shun Sheffield, Cortez Barnes and Kevin Whitted.
Despite the talent, the Vols won just five games all season. Two of the five were against in-state OVC teams in Tennessee Tech and UT Martin. Only two of the wins were against SEC competition — Auburn and Ole Miss.
Following a 73-69 loss to Mississippi State in the first round of the SEC Tournament, Wade Houston was fired after five years on the job.
A former high school coach from Kentucky who was hired — some said — just to get his son to Knoxville, Houston didn’t exactly have a lot of success even with his future New York Knick son on the roster. His combined record through five seasons was 65-90. There was a surprise run to the SEC Tournament championship game in 1991, which saw the Vols go on a tear in the tournament by winning three games in three days after winning only nine games all season. But there was also a 101-40 loss to Kentucky in the 1993 SEC Tournament.
I didn’t have to look up any of those facts, by the way. I remember them well — remember the entire Wade Houston era well, even if my only in-person exposure to his brand of basketball was that Saturday afternoon in February 1994. The rest of the time I spent listening to John Ward call the games on the Vol Network.
I remember the Kevin O’Neill era just as well. O’Neill was hired from Marquette to replace Houston, and had modest success that made Tennessee fans giddy. In retrospect, his slow-it-down approach was about as exciting as watching paint dry, but he won a few games and that was a bit of a novelty after the Wade Houston era. I remember a fan shouting “We love you, Coach” after a win at Thompson-Boling Arena and O’Neill replying, “You’re still not getting my Bud Light” (remember that marketing campaign?).
After his third season in Knoxville, and after saying he would be back for a fourth even if he was hit by a truck, O’Neill got hit by a truck named Northwestern, and off he went.
That shouldn’t have been a bad thing; O’Neill never had a winning record at Tennessee, and finished dead last in the SEC East all three seasons he was on the job. But it seemed like a dismal moment at the time.
Then Tennessee hired Jerry Green, and Green’s team won 20 games in his first year. In four years, Green’s teams never failed to win at least 20 games. But Green was about as pleasant as a nest of stirred-up yellow jackets that has been freshly mowed over by a John Deere on an August afternoon, and he managed to alienate everyone — from players to fans to the ones who signed his paycheck. Following a late season collapse in 2001 and a fourth place finish in the SEC East, Green was unceremoniously shown the door. What do I remember most about the Jerry Green era? Besides giving up about 800 3-pointers to North Carolina in an NCAA Tournament game, it would be Tony Harris — supposedly too injured to play — racing from the bench to join a fight on the opposite end of the floor.
Then Doug Dickey went out and hired Michael Jordan’s former roommate in Chapel Hill — Buzz Peterson. Hope was renewed in Big Orange Country, because Michael Jordan’s old teammate has to be a good coach, right?
Wrong. The Buzz Peterson era was the age of black curtains hanging in the upper deck end zones at Thompson-Boling Arena to hide the thousands of empty seats. He finished barely above .500 in four years in Knoxville, then he, too, was fired, and it was back to the drawing board.
Bruce Pearl. All of us remember Bruce Pearl. We probably didn’t get too excited when Pearl was announced as Peterson’s successor — at least not initially. If Michael Jordan’s old bestie couldn’t get it done, what hope was there for a guy from Milwaukee who had alienated every coach in the Midwest by participating in an NCAA investigation?
Except Pearl captured lightning in a bottle his first year, going 22-8 with a freshman phenom named Chris Lofton, and finishing first in the SEC East.
It was a glorious five-year run for Pearl in Knoxville, one that included an all-time best 31 wins in 2008 and the school’s first-ever Elite Eight appearance in 2010.
Then came the barbecue at Pearl’s Knoxville home that eventually led to a show-cause penalty and his termination at Tennessee. It was a numbing blow for a Tennessee fan base that should’ve been immune to gut-punches, made all the worse because the Pearl revelations were made at about the same time that legendary women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt was announcing that she had Alzheimer’s.
And so began another half-decade of despair that saw Cuonzo Martin and Donnie Tyndall paraded through Knoxville.
Finally, after Tyndall was fired on his way to his own NCAA show-cause penalty, Tennessee struck gold when Texas decided it was tired of Rick Barnes and turned him out to pasture.
I said all of that to say this: There are some Tennessee fans — a minority, sure, but a vocal minority on Twitter — who want to fire Rick Barnes. The Vols have lost three straight games (to No. 2 Purdue, No. 1 Kansas and No. 17 North Carolina) and these grumbling fans have had enough.
And to them I say: I remember 3,500 people at a game to watch a four-win Wade Houston team. I remember being happy to break 50 points with Kevin O’Neill. I remember the chronic under-achievement of Buzz Peterson. I remember the happiness-turned-despair of Bruce Pearl. I remember Cuonzo Martin. I remember Donnie Tyndall.
All my life, Tennessee basketball has been an afterthought, with the brief exception of Bruce Pearl’s time in Knoxville. And by all my life, I mean literally all my life. Ray Mears retired in 1977, two years before I was born.
Now Tennessee has a future first-ballot Hall of Famer who is an even better man and role model than he is a coach, who consistently attracts blue-chip talent to Knoxville and consistently has his team ranked among the top teams in the nation, and y’all want to get rid of him? Do you not remember Wade Houston, Kevin O’Neill, et al?
“Regular Season Rick,” you call him. And, yes, his teams have consistently under-performed in the postseason, both at Tennessee and at Texas before that. Who knows why. Maybe it’s psychology. Maybe it’s bad luck. Maybe it’s coincidence. But I know this: A Sweet Sixteen finish to the season is better than no NCAA Tournament bid at all.
“Retirement Rick” is another name that’s popular. Because, supposedly, he’s just riding out his time and getting plump off the Tennessee dime until he’s ready to hang it up.
And to that I say, “good!” Barnes is going to retire from Tennessee, and that’s not a bad thing. It would be completely absurd to even think about firing a guy who has a 65% winning percentage, who won the school’s first SEC Tournament crown in more than 40 years, who may be the best example of sportsmanship in an industry that is chronically bereft of good manners.
Barnes’ teams are only getting better. He’s won 52 games in just the past two seasons. And this year’s team, the 4-3 start not withstanding, might be the most talented team he’s had since he arrived in Knoxville in 2015.
That 2019 team, the one featuring Grant Williams and Admiral Schofield, the one that came within a breath of an Elite Eight appearance before being the victim of a terrible late-game call that bounced them form the NCAA Tournament, might have been the most enjoyable, most exciting team in the history of Tennessee basketball. And you’re ready to fire the architect of that team?
Barnes isn’t off-limits to criticism. I get it. The moment he flirted with UCLA and Tennessee made him one of the highest-paid coaches in college basketball, he opened himself to a completely new level of scrutiny. For $5 million-plus a year, fans are going to demand results, and those demands are going to include something more than a second-weekend appearance in the NCAA Tournament.
Will Barnes ever get to a Final Four with a Tennessee team? I hope so. As a fan, I hope so. More than that, I think, I want Barnes to get one for himself before he retires. He deserves it.
But for those who are convinced he won’t and are ready to move on, I say this: Who are all the Final Four coaches who are beating down the door to come to Knoxville?
You think the Vols have struggled to find the right hire in football since firing Phillip Fulmer? (Which, by the way, was the right move.) UT has only slogged through the wilderness of college football for a decade-and-a-half since Fulmer left, and the Vols are a college football blueblood — or, at least, once were.
Tennessee basketball wandered in the wilderness for more than 30 years between Ray Mears and the hire of Bruce Pearl, and Pearl tainted his success by lying to NCAA investigators and getting himself fired. By the time the Vols hired Barnes, it had been almost 40 years.
Four decades of irrelevance and now you want to fire the guy who has made the UT basketball program the most relevant it has ever been? Because he can’t beat Kansas or North Carolina in November? Because his 25- and 30-win teams didn’t make it far enough in March?
Again, where are the Final Four coaches who are going to replace Barnes? Tennessee isn’t a college basketball blueblood. Proven coaches go places like North Carolina, Duke, Kansas and (gross) Kentucky. They don’t go to Tennessee. Which means second-tier programs like Tennessee have to roll the dice on up-and-comers and hope to strike it rich.
We spent far too many years gambling on rising stars who faded quickly.
I was just a kid when Tennessee lost to a bad South Carolina fan in front of a nearly-empty Thompson-Boling Arena in 1994. Now I’m in my 40s. If Tennessee goes another 40 years before finding the next right hire, like it did between Mears and Barnes, I’ll be in my 80s. If I’m even still kicking and know what a basketball is, I’m pretty sure I won’t give a hoot.
Let’s enjoy what we’ve got, which is a future hall of famer who will field one of the most talented teams in the country in any given season, stand toe-to-toe with the top teams in college basketball, beat Kentucky at least half the time, and consistently win 20-plus games.
Anything more than that is icing on the cake.