Tennessee coach Rick Barnes focuses on facing toughest leagues as he dismisses Memphis rivalry return

Tennessee men's basketball head coach Rick Barnes has no plans to renew the Volunteers' longtime rivalry against the Memphis Tigers in the coming season. Both programs are regarded as two of the strongest in the state.

On Wednesday, however, Barnes revealed in a video posted on X, his attention was focused on something more important, and that is facing the toughest leagues during the 2025-26 season.

“We haven’t talked about that in a couple years,” Barnes said during an interview at Vols’ Big Orange Caravan on Tuesday. “And it’s nowhere [near] being talked about now. With the change of, you know, new teams coming into our league. We just came out of playing in historically the hardest, best conference ever. So, everything we do [inaudible] will be based on where we feel our league is and what we need to do.”

Tennessee and Memphis first met in 1969 for the All-College Tournament, in which the Vols won. Then both teams met again in 1988, and their meeting became more frequent since then. The last time the Vols and Tigers met was in December 2019, where Barnes' team was poor offensively at Knoxville.

Both teams were supposed to meet again at a neutral ground in Nashville in 2020, but the game was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rick Barnes signs a French guard

As part of efforts to boost the squad ahead of the 2025-26 season, Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes signed French guard Clarence Massamba from AS Monaco. Following the signing, Barnes released a statement, welcoming Massamba into the squad.

“We are happy to welcome Clarence and his family to the Tennessee basketball program,” Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes said in a statement. “Once we identified Clarence as a player of interest, we immediately became excited about his impressive upside. He is a long, athletic, versatile guard who can really attack in the open court."

" He is good with the ball in his hands, yet also possesses the ability to excel without it. Clarence has a nice feel for the game and an excellent basketball IQ. He is a hard-working, driven young man who plays with a chip on his shoulder and our fans will love seeing the way he competes.”

Massamba mostly played on AC Monaco’s B team (U21) where he averaged 9.8 points, 2.8 rebounds, 1.2 assists and 1.3 steals per game. Before that, he played two seasons at The Rock School in Gainesville, Florida, where he averaged 13 points and five rebounds per game during the 2023-24 season with the Lions.