Rod Barnes Team 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 not the most confident team by our play right now, but we've got to fight through. We're going to keep fighting.

We're a team that's gotten off to a good start. But we've got to come to play every night, or things will change in a hurry.

To be a championship team you have to have a sense of urgency on every possession. You've got to be able to play freely, but you've got to say, Man, we can't throw it away.' There is a certain amount of focus you have to have every trip.

When you have a young time like we do, it's going to affect them. Sometimes when you have an older team you may have a situation where guys have been there, and it becomes a rallying cry for everybody.

We've got to be a team that bounces back.

We're the third-youngest team in the league, and it's starting to show. We're in a rebuilding process and we've still got a few missing pieces. We lack in confidence --kind of like my first season here. This is an unforgiving league. But one of these games, we're going to put everything together.

(Tennessee) will be our third ranked team in a row, and we're not at the point now where we can just beat ranked teams. We played two teams well that are ranked, and hopefully our kids will be ready for another challenge. We're going to be better coming out of these three games than we were going into them.

A lot of things happen from your point guard. If he looks like he's in control, your whole team is more confident.

There were some turnovers that they had nothing to do with. It was just passing and catching. You can't do that against a top 10 team and win. It just doesn't happen.

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

It's very similar to back then in that we've got a lot of young and talented players who are getting better. I have to say this team is a little bit of a surprise to me right now. I thought we would eventually be good, but we have handled adversity a lot better than I thought we would. And that's similar to the way it was when we had Michael and Keith and all those other guys. This group probably has more confidence at an earlier stage than that group did.

At the end we were playing like a team that hadn't won in a while. We did everything we could to give it away.

I had a job to do. And as tough as this has been for all of us with this team over the past couple of weeks, I was going to go out there and do my job, giving it all I had. My word is my bond. I gave my word to my guys.

You can't have 19 turnovers against a Top 10 team and expect to win.