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Rick Barnes beat the school he used to coach at in Friday’s SEC Tournament quarterfinals in Nashville.
Then the 70-year-old coaching veteran spent a chunk of his postgame press conference defending that school’s NCAA Tournament chances.
The Tennessee head coach led his 4th-seeded Volunteers to a solid 83-72 victory over a gritty Texas squad that walked into Nashville as a 13th seed and ended up knocking off Vanderbilt and Texas A&M on its way to a stunning quarterfinal appearance. The Longhorns couldn’t duplicate the magic for a third straight day, and now they’ll wait and wonder for the next few days with a 19-15 overall record.
But Barnes believes that Texas, where he was the head coach from 1998-2015, shouldn’t be wondering at all about its March Madness status.
“There’s no doubt. Texas is an NCAA team. … There’s no doubt in my mind they did enough. I think they’ve done more than enough. I think we should have 14 teams in the NCAA Tournament is what I think,” said Barnes in Friday’s postgame press conference, referring to the SEC possibly getting that many teams in the Big Dance.
Barnes’ assertion about 14 SEC teams getting in might be some wishful thinking, but Texas will be squarely on the bubble for the next 48 hours until its name is either called or not on Selection Sunday.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
