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20:00: Tipoff is set for 7:02 PM EDT.
The Tennessee Volunteers are set to play against the Duke Blue Devils in their second exhibition game of the offseason. This is also the last game that the Vols will play before they actually get to the season, which will begin in the first week of November, when the Tennessee basketball program begins non-conference play.
This game is one that Rick Barnes and his staff is ready for, as this is a game that should open eyes to what Tennessee basketball is set to experienece in their final stretch before the season.
Here is what Rick Barnes said ahead of the game.
“I think everything’s good. I mean, we know that we’ve got a lot to learn just by being out and playing against somebody else, and there were some things in the first half that were good. We should have scored more points than we did in the first half. The second half, it really got down to when we hit some adversity, we just stopped altogether playing defense and rebounding, just think we’re gonna shoot the ball and think that’s gonna be good enough."
"We knew that would rear its head at some point in time; we knew that. That’s why I love these exhibition games, because you get a chance to let those things happen. And then, obviously, we’ve got a good group of guys. They wanna learn, but they don’t know what they don’t know right now. There’s some elementary things that we feel like that they should, but that’s not their fault, because we’re learning a whole new system and some of that we’ve got to do better jobs as coaches to teach them some of these things."
"But their attitudes have been good. I know they wanna be a good basketball team. But we haven’t been able to put the whole team together yet. Obviously, with Tyler (Lundblade), I don’t think he’ll play again tomorrow, but he’s making progress. And Jalen (Washington’s) status, we don’t know. But with that, we’re still trying to figure out a lot of things with this group. But we will figure it out,” Barnes said.
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