“I went to the Cape Cod League after my freshman year, and that was when I really started to get some attention,” said Barnes. “Then I went back to UConn, and we obviously had some pretty highly touted guys. I was just able to take advantage of scouts coming to see guys like Mike Olt and Pierre LePage. I was fortunate enough to have some good outings when some scouts were there. Then when I played on Team USA, that’s when it really kind of took off.”
“I gave them a ballpark number before the draft, but we had very minimal contact over the entire summer, until maybe a week before the deadline,” said Barnes. “I talked to them the day before the deadline, and my agent talked to them as well, and they didn’t want to do anything. We just kind of sat around until quarter to midnight [on Aug. 15], and then squeezed two months' worth of negotiations into 10 minutes.”
