Watch: Highlights From Tennessee's Exhibition Win Over Lenoir-Rhyne

Rick Barnes's new look Tennessee team took the court in Thompson-Bolin arena today for an exhibition game against Lenoir-Rhyne. The game marked the debut of

Rick Barnes's new look Tennessee team took the court in Thompson-Bolin arena today for an exhibition game against Lenoir-Rhyne. The game marked the debut of several newcomers, including high-profile freshmen Kennedy Chandler and Brandon Huntley-Hatfield as well as Auburn transfer Justin Powell. The Vols cruised to a 102-63 victory behind a high-octane, three-point shooting attack. You can watch the full highlights below.

highlights from an exhibition win pic.twitter.com/E5JVv8tfbq

— Tennessee Basketball (@Vol_Hoops) October 30, 2021

"I do think our older guys did a nice job with the younger guys to try and get them to understand our preparation, a couple days out, and gameday," Barnes said following the win. "This is the first time that we really got to do what would be a normal gameday. A week ago when we went against Davidson, it was not quite the same. Plus this was the first time they had a chance to play in front of people, which was a great feeling to be back in Thompson-Boling. That was a neat part for them. The fact is I thought overall there were some good things. Obviously, people have talked about shooting a lot of threes, and we worked all year on taking open shots. Today we were good, with exception of maybe three of them that I think I looked at the coaches and went, ‘that’s not a good one.’ There were some good things defensively. We got to be more active, we got to come up with more deflections, we got to do a better job of guarding the ball one on one. Give Lenoir-Rhyne credit, they spread you out. At times they had about four or five guards out there it seemed like. They were really opening the court up. They move, they cut, and rebounds are a big thing that we talked about, and I think they had seven offensive rebounds. I’ll be surprised if a majority of those didn’t come from our guards not blocking out. I know right off the top of my head about three or four of them did, because we were running the other way without securing the ball. Overall, I think everybody had good moments. A couple guys we expect a little more from, but overall, it was good for us."

Tennessee's offense attempted a barrage of three-pointers this game, which was a bit uncharacteristic for a Rick Barnes team, and he addressed this after the game.

“I had thought in the past that we had guys that refused to shoot it when they were open, and the fact is when you refuse to take open good shots normally that possession ends up getting your back against the clock and normally good things don’t happen," Barnes said. "We stat it every day, and our players understand where their shots are coming from. We want them to take open shots, we want them to. But we also feel that by doing that, it’s going to give us a chance. We have some guys that we think have the speed to drive the ball and get into those cracks. We think we are going to continue to get better with our inside presence. We played today without John Fulkerson, who with him, we do some things differently—some but not a lot. I’ll think he’ll benefit from this. We missed Yves Pons today. We missed his defensive fix-it plays. We did miss that. We need to keep working on getting better. But we played ourselves twice in a 40-minute game, we played Davidson and then we played ourselves, and in all four of those games we shot over 40 threes. We shot it at a clip of 40 which is about where we’ve been. We haven’t been under 40."

Tennessee made 17 three-pointers on Saturday, which would have been good for a program record in a regular season game. Chandler led all scorers with 21 points, while Huntley-Hatfield (15), Powell (14), Nkamhoua (12), and Plasvic (10), all scored in double-figures. Super senior John Fulkerson was sidelined by a thumb injury, but he is expected to be available by the season-opener later this month.