HICKORY, N.C. - During its annual Naismith Awards Brunch at the Final Four Sunday in Minneapolis, the Atlanta Tipoff Club announced that Lenoir-Rhyne alum and current Tennessee Men's Basketball Coach Rick Barnes is the winner of the 2019 Werner Ladder Naismith Men's Coach of the Year Award.
 
Barnes was the runner-up for the award last season. He becomes the first Tennessee men's coach to win the award, adding to the five honors held by legendary Lady Vols head coach, the late Pat Summitt.

A native of Hickory, N.C., Barnes was a standout player at Hickory High, from which he graduated in 1973. Barnes moved on to Lenoir-Rhyne where he lettered for three seasons and won the Captain's Award for Leadership as both a junior and senior.

He earned a bachelor's degree in health and physical education from Lenoir-Rhyne in 1977 and was named the college's Distinguished Alumnus in 1997. Barnes was inducted into the Lenoir-Rhyne College Hall of Fame on Oct. 5, 2002, and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Lenoir-Rhyne on May 7, 2005.
 
Barnes was chosen by the Atlanta Tipoff Club's national voting academy, comprised of leading journalists from around the country, current and former head coaches, former award winners and conference commissioners, all of whom base their selections on outstanding coaching performances during the 2018-19 college basketball season. Additionally, fans contributed to five percent of the total vote.
 
It is the second national coach of the year honor for Barnes this season, as the USBWA previously named him the "overwhelming" winner of its 2019 Henry Iba Award.
 
Barnes edged out three other Naismith Coach of the Year finalists in Chris Beard (Texas Tech), Tony Bennett (Virginia) and Kelvin Sampson (Houston).
 
This season, Barnes led the Big Orange to a school-record-tying 31 wins and a school-record 19-game win streak. For the first time in program history, Tennessee spent the entire season ranked in the top 10, and the Vols occupied the No. 1 spot in both major polls for four consecutive weeks.
 
Tennessee scored more than 3,000 points for the first time in program history and also set single-season records for assists (661) and blocks (199).
 
The Vols concluded their season last week in the Sweet Sixteen round of the NCAA Tournament. It was Barnes's seventh career Sweet Sixteen appearance, and in doing so, he became just the 12^th head coach to lead at least three different Division I programs to the Round of 16.