Rick Barnes is 70 years old, and has been toiling in the gardens of college basketball for many years. From 1999 to 2015, he was the head coach at Texas, where he took them to the Final Four in 2003, and to the Elite Eight in 2006 and 2008. But in 2015, after his fourth year in a row of double-digit losses, the Longhorns let him go. He then went to Tennessee, where he became a much better coach. By 2019, he had the Vols in the Sweet 16. And after a down year in 2020, he went on the best streak of his career. Look at these results:
2021: 18-9 (28 in Ken Pom) (1st round of the NCAAs)
2022: 27-8 (9 in Ken Pom) (2d round of the NCAAs)
2023: 25-11 (6 in Ken Pom) (Sweet 16)
2024: 27-9 (5 in Ken Pom) (Elite Eight)
2025: 8-0 (2 in Ken Pom)
He's already run John Calipari out of town, and on Monday he will have the number one team in the AP Poll. It's an amazing run. I can only compare it to what Ray Meyer did toward the end of his career at DePaul, but that was 40 years ago.
In any event, it is wreaking havoc with basketball in Kentucky. Barnes already has a 22-point win over Louisville this season, and he still has two games coming up with the Big Blue.
I just read about Rick Barnes on Wikipedia. Two things: I did not realize he is from Hickory, North Carolina, and I did not know he appeared on Friday Night Lights as a football coach.
ReplyDelete