Rick Barnes will officially takeover as the head coach of University of Tennessee Men’s Basketball program, per ESPN’s Jeff Goodman. An announcement and news conference will be held later today in Knoxville. Barnes who spent the last 17 years as the head coach of the University of Texas program, received a lot of recent criticism on his lack of success as head coach. One of the growing issues with Barnes was his lack of ability to keep some of the best basketball players in Texas, in-state. A number of top recruits from Texas had spurned the Longhorns to go to more prominent national programs. On years where Barnes actually got top recruits like the 2007 Kevin Durant team or the 2010 team that had three first round picks (Tristan Thompson, Jordan Hamilton, Corey Joseph) his teams only saw moderate success and failed to live up to expectations. Barnes is clearly a good basketball mind, who maybe needs a fresh start, and hopefully the fleeting University of Tennessee program is exactly what he needs.
Rick Barnes to Tennessee is done, sources told ESPN. News conference later today.
— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanESPN) March 31, 2015