After Saturday night’s blowout loss to the Kentucky Wildcats, coach Rick Barnes said the Tennessee Volunteers played “selfishly” in the game.

On Monday, he walked those comments back a little bit, explaining that he didn’t mean his players were trying to hurt the team with their play.

Instead, he explained, he meant that everyone was so eager to try to bring the Vols back that they were trying to make the big play by themselves (via RockyTopInsider.com):

“Well, when I say selfish, I should probably say, we got to a point where we weren’t in sync, we never settled in on offense,” Barnes explained during his press conference on Monday. “Every guy said at some point, ‘I’ve got to make something happen’ as opposed to ‘we’ve got to stay together and work the game.

“I don’t mean selfish from ‘I’ve got to get my points.’ It’s like ‘I’ve got to make something happen,’ as opposed to saying, ‘we’ve got to make something happen as a team.’ We never got all five guys that were on the court on the same page at the same time.”

That’s an important clarification, and Barnes added that the Vols were responding well to the loss.

This week, they have a home game against Vanderbilt and a road trip to LSU, so we’ll see if they are able to keep their lead in the SEC standings.