Rick Barnes Preparing To Reach Milestones In 2023

In a long-lived career in coaching college basketball, Tennessee Volunteers head coach Rick Barnes finds himself within reach of 800 wins this upcoming season.

A long career at Tennessee and in division one hoops has blessed each coach Rick Barnes with many things. He has been to many NCAA tournaments and won hundreds of games throughout his career. In the upcoming 2023-24 season, Barnes can reach the 800-win mark. Only 13 coaches have been able to do that in college basketball's long history.

Barnes is currently T-18th on the all-time list with 779 wins, along with former head coach Lou Henson. If you divide where his wins came from among the schools he coached, over half of his wins came from his tenure at Texas, and 108 came from coaching at Providence. At Rocky Top, he has amassed 175 wins meaning that he would crack 200 wins as a Vol to get 800 overall.

Tennessee HC Rick Barnes

Math tells us that Barnes needs 21 wins this season to get to this mark which is very doable. In his time in Knoxville, he has led the team to a 21-win season four times. That is half of his seasons at Tennessee. If we look at his overall career that started back in the 1987-88 season, Barnes has gotten 18 21-win seasons Among all the schools he has coached at. This also is half of the seasons he has coached in his overall career (36 seasons). However, recent history shows us that Barnes has gotten to the 21-win mark in seasons in bunches. He has done so in the past two seasons in Knoxville, and while he was at Texas, he got to the 21-win total five times in a row from 1999-2004 and six times in a row from 2005-2011. Barnes is very capable of making history in the upcoming season. He has done what he needs to do before and is trending toward doing it again. 

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