Tennessee Basketball is slated to compete in a stacked Players Era Tournament during Thanksgiving week this fall. And while we already know that the Vols will match up against ex-Tennessee guard Bishop Boswell and the Maryland Terrapins in Round 1, he might not be the only former Vol that Tennessee sees in Las Vegas.
It would take a lot of specific outcomes for this to happen, but there’s a path for Tennessee to square off against former Vol J.P. Estrella and the Michigan Wolverines in a rematch of last season’s Elite Eight in the Players Era Tournament championship.
The Vols and the Wolverines are on opposite sides of the 16-team bracket. That means that both teams would have to go 3-0 during the Thanksgiving week slate to reach the tournament finals on Nov. 28. Tennessee’s first game is against Maryland, while Michigan’s first game will be against Creighton.
Here’s a look at the full 16-team bracket for the Players Era Tournament this fall:
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Michigan defeated Tennessee by a score of 95-62 during the NCAA Tournament on March 29. Estrella was one of the Vols’ five starting players in the game, racking up seven points and seven rebounds while playing 25 minutes.
Estrella announced his intention to enter the transfer portal just one day before it opened in April. He was Tennessee’s third-leading scorer last season at 10.0 points per game, and averaged 5.4 rebounds and 0.8 assists while playing in 33 games for the Volunteers. Estrella started 13 of the 33 games that he played in.
The Maine native scored a double-digit point total in 19 games last season, including three games where he hit 20-plus points. He racked up 23 points in a November game against North Florida, and then had back-to-back showings with 22 against South Carolina and 20 against Vanderbilt in the final two games of the regular season.
The 6-foot-11 forward spent the last three years with Tennessee. He played in 25 games during his first season, but then only played in three games his second year after undergoing season-ending foot surgery. He came back strong for his redshirt-sophomore season this past year, but still missed some time as he battled both a knee and ankle injury during the year.
If Tennessee and Michigan face off in the finals, it’ll be a fairly unrecognizable Volunteers team for Estrella. Many of his teammates left through graduation or the transfer portal during the offseason, while Tennessee filled those spots with the second-ranked transfer portal class in the country. Estrella’s assistant coach Justin Gainey also won’t be on the sideline, as he took a job with NC State following the end of the season.
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