[Old School Hound]

"Tennessee: I'd rather have John Calipari coaching my team than Rick Barnes. Let that sink in."

I don't have to let it sink in; shocked my socks clean off my feet!!!
I would love for you to expand on that comment.

I've always felt Barnes was almost criminally overrated. Nothing about his results "scream" great coach-- I've always thought of him as a guy who can recruit well enough in the right situation and win regular season games, but will choke in the Tournament.

To me, the ultimate test of a coach is going through their history and making a list of their teams that ultimately overachieved or underachieved. He has very few teams that I'd consider overachievers. He's been at "football schools" throughout his career (Clemson, Texas, and Tennessee), so it isn't as if the expectations have ever been out of this world.

If you want to see him at his worst, watch his late game execution in last year's Maui Tournament against Purdue. He was just making some really head scratching decisions; it was bad enough that both the announcers and the post-game crew back in the studio were making very PC "not sure I understand the logic there" and/or "did he think he was only down three points" type comments. This was the same Purdue team that ended up beating him out of the tournament.

The University of Texas is one of the most powerful brands in all of college sports, and had some decently talented teams, but only made one Final Four in 2003. To get to that Final Four, he beat a fifth seeded UConn and seventh seeded Michigan State in a regional final in San Antonio (which is less than 70 miles from his campus and had an enormous amount of Texas fans making it a de facto home game). Not saying he didn't earn it, because he could only beat the teams in front of him, but he had LOTS of things fall his way to get there. He was fired by Texas after failing to get back to the Sweet 16 in seven straight seasons.

Other than the Final Four at Texas, he has supposedly had some great "built for March" teams at Tennessee and has exactly one Final Four to show for it. The rest of his results at Tennessee are listed below (you'll see a trend of upsets to double digit seeds).

2023 - came in as a #4, lost to 9th seeded FAU
2022 - came in as a #3, lost to 11th seeded Michigan
2021 - came in as a #5, lost to 12th seeded Oregon State
2020 - COVID (he was 17-14 on the season)
2019 - came in as a #2, lost to 3rd seeded Purdue
2018 - came in as a #3, lost to 11th seeded Loyola-Chicago
2017 - missed the NCAA Tournament (finished 16-16)
2016 - missed the NCAA Tournament (finished 15-19)

In summary, in nine seasons at Tennessee he was beaten out by a single digit seed three times, with one of those single digit seeds being a #9. It isn't as if he was coming in as a #6-9 and getting upset either, his seed lines were 2-3-3-4-5.


If he can turn it around at Tennessee and get to some more Final Fours or even win a Championship, I may eat my words, but he's got a resume of nearly 40 seasons as this point and I've never understood all the hype. He's the kind of guy who has historically been able to win a lot of regular season basketball games at a football school, nothing more, nothing less.

I'm seriously baffled by anyone who has ever been on the "fire Stoops" and the fire Calipari and replace him with Rick Barnes" trains because it seems to be a pretty contradictory position.

Great post by BGR's best roundball writer.  Barnes is historically underwhelming once the regular season ends.  His teams peter out in the postseason. Advancing no further than second round with Kevin Durant leading your team should be a crime against humanity. Barnes seems like a nice man but nice men tend to suck when the calendar deep dives into March.