BREAKING: Tennessee Extends Rick Barnes
While slated to be the Tennessee Volunteers Basketball coach for a little while, Tennessee Athletic Director Danny White felt it wasn't enough. White extended Barnes 1 year through the 2027-28 season to assure the Vols' head coach was around in Knoxville for 5 more seasons.
Barnes' current contract says that he is owed around 5.88 million per year over the 5 years remaining according to the Knoxville News Sentinel's Mike Wilson. Wilson also states that Barnes is going to get 6 million over the final 2 years of the contract.
While sometimes heavily criticized for a lack of tournament success at Tennessee, Rick Barnes has a great argument to be the greatest basketball coach in Tennessee's program history. Ray Mears is probably the only coach that has an argument when it comes to longevity and success and Bruce Pearl killed the program with NCAA violations so he's probably not qualified for this discussion.
What Barnes has created and kept at the level in Knoxville in the current SEC climate is unheard of within the program. He took a football school and got fans to care about basketball.
While the most impressive thing about Barnes' tenure at Tennessee is maybe what you can't measure, he has some impressive accolades that you can measure too. Counting the 2020-21 COVID-19-riddled season where every team in the country played significantly fewer games, Barnes has won 20+ games in 5 of his last 6 seasons with the Vols. 4 of those seasons have been 25+ win seasons. He has both a regular season SEC Championship and SEC Tournament championship while going to multiple Sweet 16s.
As the Vols continue to add high-level talent, Barnes is destined for even more NCAA Tournament success. The team he has this year has a real shot to be his best in Knoxville and him being the Head Coach at Tennessee is something fans won't take for granted.
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