Tennessee Basketball completely revamped its roster this offseason, bringing in eight new players from the transfer portal after three players departed for the NBA Draft and six players left through the transfer portal.
Despite the turnover, though, optimism has been extremely high around Tennessee’s future with its new roster. ESPN’s Jeff Borzello recently tagged Tennessee’s class as the No. 1 transfer group in the nation and put Tennessee as his No. 6 overall team in way-too-early power rankings.
The curveball comes with Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology projections, though. Perhaps Lunardi is waiting to see how everything clicks to raise Tennessee’s projection. At the same time, though, his introductory paragraph is stuffed with Kentucky transfer portal news after raising the Wildcats up three full spots in his projections.
Lunardi has Tennessee projected as a 5-seed in his last bracketology update, which is considerably lower than a No. 6 team in way-too-early projections should garner. Borzello’s power ranking suggests that Tennessee would be on the 2-line and possibly even fighting for a 1-seed spot. For context, Tennessee was a 6-seed in the NCAA Tournament this past spring.
Florida is the only SEC team above Tennessee in the way-too-early rankings, while there are three SEC teams seeded higher than the Vols in Lunardi’s projections this week (Florida, Arkansas, Texas).
Either way, Lunardi’s projection has Tennessee taking on 12-seed High Point in the first round from Omaha, Nebraska. Tennessee is then slotted for a second-round matchup against 4-seed Kansas or 13-seed Wichita State. Other notable projections in Lunardi’s Midwest Region projection include 1-seed Michigan, 2-seed Arkansas, 3-seed Gonzaga, 6-seed Texas Tech, 8-seed Georgia, and 11-seed Oklahoma.
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Tennessee brought in eight new players from the transfer portal over the last few months. The Vols signed six Top 100 players from 247Sports’ transfer portal rankings, including Juke Harris (No. 8), Terrence Hill Jr. (No. 19), Jalen Haralson (No. 25), Dai Dai Ames (No. 53), Tyler Lundblade (No. 59), and Miles Rubin (No. 95). Five of Tennessee’s incoming portal players averaged 15.0 points or more per game last season at their previous schools.
“Rick Barnes clearly emphasized offense in the portal,” Jeff Borzello wrote. “Seven of the team’s eight incoming transfers averaged double figures at their previous schools — Harris, Ames, Haralson, Lundblade and Hill are each considered high-level offensive players. Harris was an elite scorer last season; Ames and Hill are playmakers with the ball in their hands; Lundblade is a terrific off-ball mover and shotmaker; and Haralson is highly productive inside the arc. There will be a learning curve for the Vols’ newcomers on the defensive end, but Rubin has been an excellent shot blocker and rim protector for three seasons.”
