CHICAGO — First, a small excerpt from the life and times of Rick Barnes.
Here was this coveted five-star prospect from Virginia, Nate Ament. Lots of talent, a hot name, but he understood something was missing. Only, what? “I needed to kind of increase my motor,” he was saying Saturday. “And become a more of an effort player.”
Here was the veteran coach from the SEC school who was only happy to tell him how it had to happen. No sugar coating. Rick Barnes doesn’t do sugar coating.
“It goes back to, I think, being direct. I think it goes back to being brutally honest. Like the night with Nate, I said, 'I'm gonna tell you the truth. This is what we need.’ And the last thing I said to him, 'If you choose to do this, it's going to be the hardest thing in your life, and there's going to be days you're not going to like me very much. But when it's all said and done, you'll understand all of it.’”
Now Ament is at the end of a boffo freshman season and the Tennessee Volunteers are in the Midwest regional final, one win from the first Final Four in school history.
Maybe that story explains a little of how the following has happened. Rick Barnes has won more college basketball games on the court than all but 10 Division I coaches who ever lived. He has taken more teams to the NCAA tournament than all but three — Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Boeheim and Roy Williams, and he’s tied with Williams. He is in the Elite Eight for the third consecutive year, something only six other men have managed this century.
😎 LET'S GET ELITE: Front porch of the Final Four: Chaos and comebacks set the Elite Eight stage
So here’s the question. If the gods of March are feeling sentimental, might they consider a smile for Tennessee Sunday in the United Center?
They would have nothing against Michigan. Obviously among the nation’s best teams. Nothing against Dusty May. One of the bright new coaching stars. Nothing against maize or blue or The Victors. This is about a basketball lifer who has paid decades of dues, and a ticking career clock that is a reminder how nobody gets unlimited cracks at this month. “It's something you don't take for granted,” Barnes said the other day about the chance to make yet another run in yet another NCAA tournament. “You don’t ever take it for granted.”
He may not have the national championship trophies or celebrity of an Izzo, a Pitino, a Self, a Calipari. He may not have the recent Final Four trips and knack for the quote of a Sampson. He is as candid about himself as he is pretty much everything else.
Like this... “I don't think I've ever invented anything with this game, but I know that I've been a guy that has stolen a lot of stuff from a lot of coaches. And I've learned from so many coaches.”
And this... “I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, certainly as a basketball coach. But, like all teams in this tournament, we have what we believe in and we've stuck to it.”
And this...“Watch how we do practice. Our practices are open to anybody. We have parents that come to watch practice. And I'm not going to change. You're there, you see I'm not changing. I don't care who's there, parents. We're going to be who we are every single day.”
It is the earnest effort and tonnage of numbers which must be studied to appreciate Barnes. That and a heart given to coaching basketball.
“I was at Alabama for a year with Coach (Wimp) Sanderson. In our first game I walked in and he was literally lying on the sofa in his office. I said, 'Coach, are you okay?’ He said, 'This would be a great job if you never had to play games.’ I love practice. I could practice seven days a week, four hours a day. I love it. I just love watching guys get better, put it all together.'"
Look where that has led. Call it All Things Rick... He’s at 861 career victories. Adolph Rupp, for decades the Mt. Olympus of career wins, is but 15 away.
Friday’s victory over Iowa State was his 36th over opponents in the Associated Press top-25 the past five years. Nobody else has that many. This is his 30th NCAA tournament, so he has coached a team in 34.5 percent of all the tournaments ever played. He’s even with Williams at 30, five behind Boeheim and six behind Krzyzewski.
Barnes has coached a team into the NCAA tournament in five different decades. Pitino is the only other active coach who can say that. Providence... Clemson... Texas... Tennessee. Barnes has directed them all into March, the first time 37 years ago. He had the Longhorns in the tournament 16 of 17 years and was fired for not winning enough. Ask a basketball holy land like Indiana, where the Hoosiers have missed six of the past eight NCAA tournaments, how 16 of 17 sounds.
His Tennessee teams have played eight games against Kentucky when the Wildcats were ranked in the top-10. He’s won seven. All that, and still March has not gone out of its way to be generous. There’s the issue. Barnes was in the Final Four with Texas in 2003 but has never been back. Tennessee has never made it there. Last year it was Houston who stopped the Vols in the Elite Eight, Purdue the year before. Always something.
WATCH 📺: Tennessee takes down Virginia in the second round
“Do I wish we could have won national championships and all that? All I can tell you is we just stay in the arena. We'll keep fighting as long as we can. I'm proud of every team we've ever had in this tournament.”
Now Michigan is in the way. No. 1 seed, blow-away-most-opponents Michigan. It’s going to be the March Madness version of a very tall order, so do the gods have a warm spot for a 71-year-old grandfather of seven? Saturday could have been the eve of one of the greatest days of Barnes’ coaching life. Or not. Anyway, he was describing the way he goes at things.
“I mean, if you do this, you want to win. You do. I just want us to be the best we can be. I want us to be the best version that we can. If we're good enough, we're good enough. I tell people in all of the time I've been in this, I haven't coached against bad coaches. Everybody's got their teams prepared. I know Michigan's worked hard. Iowa State, those guys got at it. But right now, we've got 40 minutes left in front of us, and it's got to be the hardest 40 minutes. What we did yesterday has to be better tomorrow. Each player has got to do it. It's just every day, you get up — and Nate alluded to it — we've got one philosophy: Let's get a little bit better today. Let's just be better today than we were yesterday. And if we can build on that each day, we're good enough to get to our goals, we'll get there.”
Will they? Is it Barnes’ time? And if not now, when?
“I just feel like this is where God's put me at this time, and I'm blessed. But I love coaching basketball, and I do know that God will make it perfectly clear when my time's up. I've said before this week that I'm in a wonderful situation at the University of Tennessee.”
It’s in the hands of the March fates now, and also how well the Volunteers can rebound and play defense. If it happens, nobody could complain. Not for someone who has toiled for so long and changed his core so little. Well, nobody except the Michigan Wolverines.
