Rod Barnes Game Quotations

If we lost that first game at Alabama, our kids would be questioning themselves. We accomplished that. To come back and play an experienced team like South Carolina and win, it helps with our confidence.

We're obviously going into this game feeling better about ourselves. I think our guys will be excited about playing. By the time we get there, they'll (State) be ready to play, and our kids realize that.

He's been given more opportunities and he's taking advantage of that. So it will be exciting for him to go back, but I don't think it means as much as his freshman and sophomore year. I think it's big to him, but it's not like he's not going to sleep before the game or be all intense about it. He wants to win because I think Bam just wants to win.

We've just gone to two places and got beat pretty badly. We go back home, the last time we were at home we played a great game. We're one game away from a regular-season winning season, and that's something we haven't done (since 2002). We get the opportunity to do that Saturday.

We didn't know going into the game that he would play as well as he did. We talked about him being a good shooter when he entered the game, but who would have expected that from him?

They told us it could go either way. As of (Friday) I didn't know if he had the surgery or not. His father said they would contact us after the game and let us know how everything was going. Then we got a call last night about 9:30, maybe a little later than that.

For 18, 19 minutes it was a really good basketball game (but) their team making 3s separated us.

They beat us up pretty bad. It's a tough draw for us, but after the game against LSU, I feel better about our team's state of mind. I think they're in a better state than the last game against Kentucky. That's when the uncertainty (about Barnes' future) started. Words have been spoken. A lot of those questions are behind us.

After that game, I just wanted to wake up and see that everything is OK. We have to get back to work.