{"id":576851,"date":"2026-02-02T07:46:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T07:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/576851\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T07:46:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T07:46:25","slug":"rick-barnes-jokingly-wonders-if-tennessee-players-are-betting-on-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/576851\/","title":{"rendered":"Rick Barnes jokingly wonders if Tennessee players are betting on games"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rick Barnes regretted the comment the moment it came out of his mouth.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Frustrated after Tennessee had committed 15 turnovers in a 77-69 win over Auburn on Saturday, Barnes made a joke in his postgame media availability that he wished he hadn\u2019t said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI mean at the end of the game, some of the passes that we throw, I don\u2019t know what to say other than sometimes I wonder if my guys are betting on games,\u201d Barnes told reporters, who laughed at the remark.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">This was an all-timer by Rick Barnes \ud83d\ude02<\/p>\n<p>I asked him about the team\u2019s heightened focus and it ends with him talking about certain questionable bad passes. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cSometimes I wonder if my guys are betting on games.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/1Q5Au3008b\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/1Q5Au3008b<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Paige Dauer (@PaigeDauerFDP) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PaigeDauerFDP\/status\/2017826246688715183?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">February 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>However, just as quickly as the quip came out, Barnes wanted it back, as he had his hand on his face.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI shouldn\u2019t say that. Erase that,\u201d Barnes continued. \u201cI just wonder what\u2019s happening. I mean, I know that we\u2019re too good of players to do that. Was that bad? Should I not have said that? I apologize. I shouldn\u2019t have said that. But the fact is, we\u2019ve got to get smarter. We do. We got to get smarter. We have to. They know it.<\/p>\n<p><img style=\"aspect-ratio:1.49926794;display:block\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-modal-image=\"38358828\" width=\"885\" height=\"590\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/tennessee-head-coach-rick-barnes-120152558.jpg\" alt=\"Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes yells to his players during the game.\" class=\"wp-image-38358828\"  \/>Rick Barnes is pictured during Tennessee\u2019s Jan. 31 game. AP<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve got a good group of guys, and I know they don\u2019t want to do it, but sometimes we play so hard on defense, and we\u2019re playing at a really hard frantic pace and we\u2019re not able to gear it down like we need to on offense because it\u2019s got to be played a different pace, and we\u2019re still a little too frantic on the offensive end.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was clear the comment was made in jest, but considering the current climate around college athletes and betting, Barnes seemingly didn\u2019t want to take the risk that someone might mistake the comment in any other fashion.<\/p>\n<p>Recently, 20 men were charged in a <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/01\/15\/sports\/ex-fordham-player-named-in-extensive-college-basketball-point-shaving-scandal\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">college basketball point-shaving scandal <\/a>that involved more than 30 players involved in the scheme \u2014 where they tried to earn money by fixing the outcomes of games.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>All five of Tennessee\u2019s starters committed at least one turnover in the game, and Barnes was likely not thrilled with the turnovers with under 2:30 to play in the game that led to Auburn cutting into the Volunteers\u2019 lead.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Tennessee did hold on for the win and moved to 15-6 on the season.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rick Barnes regretted the comment the moment it came out of his mouth.\u00a0 Frustrated after Tennessee had committed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,231,772,1544,7926,66,1797],"class_list":["post-576851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-college-basketball","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaab","tag-rick-barnes","tag-sports","tag-tennessee-volunteers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115999931922151292","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}