When athletic director Dave Hart fired former head basketball coach Donnie Tyndall due to his belief Tyndall would face NCAA violations, the Vols and Hart found themselves in familiar waters. The newest coaching search would be Hart’s fifth such search across major Vols athletics in four years.
Despite his quick turn around, Hart has been criticized for his hires since taking over in 2011. After less than 12 months on the job, Donnie Tyndall was fired after an NCAA investigation revealed he committed academic and financial violations while coaching at Southern Mississippi before prior to his hire at UT.
The Vols were forced to start over once more while analysts and fans assumed they would look at the mid-major level to find a new head coach. Considering their previous four hires were from teams not in Power Five conferences, these assumptions were justified.
But Hart had other plans.
Instead of looking at teams like Dayton, Buffalo or Murray State, Hart went to the Lone Star State and hired a coach with more than 600 career wins.
On Tuesday afternoon, Hart announced Rick Barnes would be Tennessee’s newest head basketball coach. Barnes had been the head coach of the Texas Longhorns for the last 17 seasons, winning more than 69 percent of his 582 games.
While the timing of Barnes’s departure from Texas and the opening at Tennessee may be viewed as a lucky coincidence for the university, Hart still sent a message with the hiring of Barnes: The Vols aren’t settling for “hope” any longer.
And Barnes is certainly a proven winner.
With a total 29 seasons as head coach at George Mason University, Providence College, Clemson University and University of Texas at Austin, Barnes has made more NCAA Tournaments (22) than UT has made in the program’s history (20).
As Texas’ head coach, Barnes has made it to as many Sweet Sixteens as Tennessee has as a program, and he’s made it to three Elite Eights and even a Final Four in 2003. The Vols have only made it as far as the Elite Eight once.
Since Barnes began his coaching career in 1987, he has more wins in his 29 seasons (604) than Tennessee has in that same time period (510) with 8 different coaches.
Though Barnes may be on the verge of turning 61, he is the type of head coach Hart wants at the helm after the Tyndall debacle — a leader to stabilize a program that has seen three different head coaches in three consecutive seasons.
While analysts and fans alike don’t expect much success from Barnes’s first team, the newest Tennessee head coach refuses to lower his own expectations.
In an interview with the Knoxville News Sentinel, Barnes said reaching the NCAA Tournament is the goal this season and every other season.
“I relate ‘rebuilding’ to saying ‘we can’t win right now,’” he said. “Our goal every year will be to get in that tournament and play for it.”
In six seasons under Bruce Pearl, the Vols made the NCAA Tournament six times in six seasons. The post-Bruce Pearl era, however, has been less kind. The Vols have only made the tournament once in four seasons since they made it to the Sweet Sixteen during Cuonzo Martin’s last season as head coach in 2014.
Yet, under Barnes, the Vols have set their sights higher.
In addition to missing only one NCAA tournament out of 17 seasons while at Texas, Barnes even took Providence and Clemson to the tournament six of his 10 seasons as head coach.
With the facilities and fan base of an upper-tier college basketball program in hand, Hart has now added a proven head coach to complete the ensemble.
