barnes (and kelvin sampson, and some other coaches) build teams that are set up to win a lot in the regular season and then lose early in the gauntlet that is the ncaa tourney.
their entire philosophy is defense-first (causing havoc, blocking shots, creating TO’s, being able to switch everything, etc), rebounding second (especially on the offensive end), and then offense/shooting third. when you watch a kelvin sampson team you usually see five guys on the court between 6’4” and 6’9”, they’re all wildly athletic, and they’re all trained to be tenacious defenders and rebounders. barnes will go for a more traditional lineup size-wise (zeigler and aidoo for example), but the basic principles and tenets of their philosophy remains the same.
sampson likes to play a very thin roster all year long- 7 guys getting all of the minutes, with a pretty thin bench. barnes likes to go deep into his bench all year long, but come tourney time you’re really only going to play 6-7 guys a lot of minutes. so now it comes down to, “what can those 7 guys do?” and for sampson, can his team avoid injury and/or foul trouble.
well, what those 7 guys can do is defend, and rebound, and be athletic, and go hard af for 40 minutes. what they usually can’t do is create their own shot, or even consistently knock down open looks. they depend on getting those offensive rebounds for a lot of their offense, and essentially by design they are going to have poor shooting days. on those days, pretty much any team that’s made the round of 32 can beat a rick barnes or a kelvin sampson team.
another thing i’ll say is that if you look at a lot of barnes’ underachieving in the tourney he’s either lost really close games to teams that made the EE/FF, or he’s gotten screwed. the man has been star crossed, snake bit, whatever you want to call it- the guy has had some brutal luck in the tourney. with that said, when he’s had a dominant player leading the way he’s done well. when he’s had a TJ Ford, DJ Augustin, or LA + PJ he’s gone to the EE or FF. this year he has dalton knecht. maybe knecht will be the x factor this year and take barnes back to the FF. i know that’s what i’m rooting for.