After spending 17 seasons in Austin as the head coach at Texas, Rick Barnes will coach his first season at Tennessee this winter. The good news for Barnes from a personnel standpoint is that many of the key contributors from last season are back in Knoxville, including five of the team’s top six scorers.
The negative: the lone player who isn’t back is versatile guard Josh Richardson, a second-round pick of the Miami Heat who led the Vols in scoring, assists and steals and ranked third on the team in rebounding.
So while Barnes works to establish his culture within the program he’s also faced with the task of accounting for the many ways in which Richardson kept last season’s team competitive in spite of turmoil surrounding then coach Donnie Tyndall.