CHICAGO – Rick Barnes is getting the last laugh.
Not that Barnes would ever gloat or call out those who had the knives out for him. He's far too nice for that. But after years of being criticized and, in some cases, mocked for not being able to win in March, Barnes has Tennessee in the Elite Eight for the third consecutive year.
You know what other coach can say that? Duke's Jon Scheyer. That's it. Out of the 350-plus schools that have NCAA Division I men's basketball teams, only Barnes and Scheyer have made it this far in each of the past three years.
But Barnes can't coach in the NCAA Tournament.
"Do I wish we could have won national championships and all that?" Barnes said Saturday, March 28. "All I can tell you is we just stay in the arena."
The Volunteers play top-seeded Michigan on Sunday, March 28, for what would be Tennessee's first-ever trip to the Final Four.
March Madness Sweet 16 winners, losers: Big Ten puts 4 teams in Elite 8
Rick Barnes' struggles in March
The knock on Barnes' record in March has a long history. The 71-year-old is in his fourth decade of coaching, at five schools, but has made only one Final Four. He's had tremendous talent — Kevin Durant, T.J. Ford, LaMarcus Aldridge and Grant Williams, to name a few — but that didn't translate into NCAA Tournament success.
He didn't get past the second round when he had Durant. He only made two Elite Eight appearances in 17 seasons at Texas. He routinely got upset by lower-seeded teams, perhaps none worse than Tennessee's loss as a third seed to 11th-seeded Michigan in the second round of the 2022 tournament.
"Did I make mistakes back then in coaching in this tournament? Certainly, I think I did," Barnes said. "Probably putting way too much pressure on guys and maybe changing up what we did maybe too much. Or, honestly, maybe and probably doing too much as opposed to doing less.
"But I will never take away from those (teams) because I know how hard they worked."
Do not take this to mean Barnes has mellowed. He has not. As congenial as he is off the court — try and find anyone to say a bad word about him as a person, I dare you — he tells kids when he recruits them he's going to work them hard and demand the sun, the moon and the stars from them and, on that, he overperforms.
"Our practices are demanding," Barnes said. "... Our job is to help these guys reach their ultimate goal. They all want to be pros. They all want to be. We don't want to be the ones that look back and say we didn't do our part. We want to look back and say we did everything we could for them and the time with us was the greatest time they ever had in their life."
Rick Barnes thrives in NIL era
What has changed is the game. Which makes it all the more ironic that Barnes is hitting his stride now.
Listen to almost every veteran coach, especially those of Barnes' vintage, and they'll rail about what's happened to college basketball and how the influx of money has poisoned the game. They'll say reforms are needed and warn of doom if they don't come.
Barnes, on the other hand, is actually enjoying this era. To him, it's more honest.
"It's easier today than it was back then," he said. "You can recruit a guy now for a week and get him. You know what I mean? `Hey, what's the number?'"
Though this Volunteers team is almost entirely new from the one that lost to Houston in the Elite Eight last year, Tennessee is not a collection of hired guns. Even today, Barnes believes that when a player transfers, it's because the recruitment process was flawed. He is honest about the way he runs his team and the expectations he has with everyone who comes through his door, whether they're a blue-chipper like Nate Ament or a role player like Troy Henderson.
When Barnes was recruiting Ament, in fact, he showed the McDonald's All American a clip of Durant scoring 32 against Kansas despite an ankle injury that had him visibly limping. If Ament wasn't prepared to give that kind of effort, Barnes told him, Tennessee wasn't the place for him.
"The last thing I said to him was, if you choose to do this, it's going to be the hardest thing in your life, and there's going to be days you're not going to like me very much," Barnes recalled. "But when it's all said and done, you'll understand all of it."
Chance to change narrative
Rather than chafing against that tough love, Barnes' players embrace it. Or, rather, embrace Barnes.
Tennessee has never made it to the men's Final Four — it made it to the Elite Eight only one other time before Barnes arrived — and the Volunteers want nothing more than to be the team that makes history.
But they also want it for Barnes. They know the narrative around his postseason success. Or lack thereof. They know the term "Regular-season Rick" isn't a compliment. Make it to the Final Four after these Elite Eight appearances, and the narrative changes.
Especially this team, a sixth-seed that has already knocked off the No. 2 (Iowa State) and No. 3 (Virginia) seeds in the Midwest Region.
"It would mean a lot just knowing how hard he works and how much he has poured into the program," Bishop Boswell said. "I don’t know if anyone deserves it as much as he does, because he’s put the hours in, the time in and the energy. So to be able to get that done for him would be amazing.”
Barnes wants to beat Michigan not because he feels he has something to prove. He's secure in his career and what he's accomplished, regardless of what anyone else thinks. But the goal of every game is to be better, to have the performance reflect the work that's been put in in practice.
If there's a regret about those NCAA Tournament losses, it's that.
"I just want us to be the best we can be. I want us to be the best version that we can. If we're good enough, we're good enough," Barnes said.
"We've got one philosophy: Let's get a little bit better today. Let's just be better today than we were yesterday," Barnes added. "And if we can build on that each day, we're good enough to get to our goals, we'll get there."
Just don't expect Barnes to gloat about it.
USA TODAY's Ehsan Kassim contributed to this report.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Rick Barnes flipping the narrative on his March Madness record
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