Most recruiting outlets didn’t even have a profile for point guard Troy Henderson when he committed to Tennessee basketball in late March. Henderson had asked out of his NLI to Fordham just a few days prior after the Rams fired head coach Keith Urgo.
Henderson took a visit to Tennessee between the first and second weekends of the NCAA Tournament and committed shortly thereafter. The Vols had a bounty of scholarships to work with and taking a flyer on a prep point guard while going big game hunting to replace Zakai Zeigler in the transfer portal made sense.
Tennessee did just that, beating out Villanova to land star Maryland point guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie. But that hasn’t stopped the overlooked Henderson from coming to Knoxville with a chip on his shoulder and pushing for early playing time.
“I was very under-recruited coming out of high school, so yeah, I feel like I use that as fuel to make a name for myself every day,” Henderson said. “Come in ready to compete.”
The 6-foot-1 point guard has made his presence felt during his first summer at Tennessee. He’s a confident offensive player who handles the ball well and has consistently hit shots from three-point range and from the mid range.
It’s easy to make the comparisons to Henderson and Zakai Zeigler. Both are undersized and were under recruited late additions to the Vols’ recruiting class. Both came in behind clear starting point guards— Gillespie for Henderson and Kennedy Chandler for Zeigler.
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Those comparisons are unfair to make when it comes to expectations, yet Henderson isn’t backing away from them. Zeigler’s story and similarities to his own game was one of the things that made Tennessee so attractive to Henderson.
“When I was on my visit here, I actually got to speak with him and just, he’s giving me good feedback on like what to expect coming in as a freshman, because he did the same thing coming as a freshman and playing under a senior guard,” Henderson said. “So he was giving me good feedback on that. Our similar games, I feel like we got definitely similar games as far as our mindset. You know, we’re coming in as smaller guards. I thought (our) mentality is the same.”
Zeigler was a defensive pest from day one and that’s maybe the biggest difference between freshman Zeigler and Henderson at the moment. Henderson needs to keep improving on the defensive end with Tennessee’s coaches challenging him to guard Gillespie— a potential All-SEC guard— every day.
But offensively, Henderson is flashing with his fearlessness and shooting. And while Gillespie is Tennessee’s clear lead guard, there’s still plenty of opportunity for Henderson. The Vols do not have a clear starting shooting guard and Henderson is competing with a bounty of other guards for those minutes.
Henderson’s ability to handle the basketball as a point guard also presents the intriguing possibility for he and Gillespie to play together the same way Zeigler and Chandler did four years prior. Gillespie is an elite shooter and sliding him off the ball opens up all sorts of intriguing possibilities for Tennessee.
“I feel like we feed off each other because we both can make plays for others,” Henderson said of playing with Gillespie. “And when we have the ball in our hands, we’re just so effective getting downhill, getting to the paint. And I feel like the way we just set others. I feel like it’s very special.”
The under recruited Henderson ended up as a three-star and the No. 196 player in the 2025 recruiting class according to the 247sports composite rankings. The Virginia native plays with far more self belief as he pushes for early playing time at Tennessee.
