There’s been a lot of hype around Tennessee Basketball’s 2026-2027 roster after the big moves that the Vols made in the transfer portal this offseason. Tennessee brought in the No. 1 portal class on ESPN, filled with six players who land in 247Sports’ Top 100 transfer rankings.
The jewel of the class was Wake Forest transfer Juke Harris, but there are several notable names including Terrence Hill, Tyler Lundblade, Dai Dai Ames, and Jalen Haralson.
With optimism comes high projections. ESPN’s Jeff Borzello recently tagged the Vols as the No. 6 team in the nation in his offseason rankings. CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein, meanwhile, has the Vols at No. 11 on his rankings. All in all, you can see why teams are high on the team despite 12 new pieces (including high school additions).
But one projection continues to defy the others. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi put out the third update to his early bracketology projections on Monday, with Tennessee landing as a projected 5-seed in all three editions. Lunardi’s latest update has Tennessee as the 5-seed in the South Region (San Antonio), playing 12-seed High Point in the first round from Omaha. The Vols would then theoretically get 4-seed Kansas or 13-seed Wichita State in the next round.
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Other notable entries in Tennessee’s South Region include 1-seed Illinois, 2-seed Texas, 3-seed Virginia, 6-seed BYU, 8-seed Auburn, 9-seed Ohio State, and 10-seed Creighton.
Additional SEC teams on the update include 1-seed Florida, 2-seed Texas, 3-seed Arkansas, 3-seed Alabama, 5-seed Kentucky, 6-seed Vanderbilt, 8-seed Missouri, 8-seed Auburn, 8-seed Georgia, 9-seed Texas A&M, and 11-seed Oklahoma (play-in).
The difference between the Top 11 offseason rankings and the 5-seed bracketology projection is pretty stark, but it is just the offseason after all. It’s fair that some can be higher on the team with all the incoming talent, while others can be in a bit more of a wait-and-see mode due to all the newness on the roster. Either way, though, Tennessee’s roster shaped up in a very nice way this offseason, and Rick Barnes is hoping that this can be the group to finally break the glass ceiling into the Final Four.
Tennessee has hosted the media for a handful of practices this summer. For the latest notes and observations on the Vols’ workouts, check out the link below:
Tennessee Basketball Practice Notes And Observations: July 13
