After three straight trips to the Elite Eight without a breakthrough to the Final Four weekend, Tennessee Basketball enters the 2026-2027 with a fresh new roster that Rick Barnes and his staff hope can be the difference in being in that final round of games.
The Vols saw six players leave the program through the portal this offseason, including starters such as J.P. Estrella, Bishop Boswell, and Jaylen Carey. But as Rick Barnes put it earlier in the year, Tennessee chose portal production over retention when assembling its next roster. The Vols brought in eight portal players, including six in 247Sports’ Top 100 transfer rankings.
Tennessee’s transfer class is headlined by Juke Harris and Terrence Hill Jr., two players who project to continue the tradition of UT adding a big-time scorer through the portal during the offseason. But the difference in this year’s class is that Tennessee brought in other scorers, too. Whether it’s Jalen Haralson, Dai Dai Ames, Tyler Lundblade, or others, UT projects to have more firepower on the court this season than it has in the past.
That’s why ESPN’s Myron Medcalf has Tennessee as one of the Top 10 national title contenders in the sport heading into the college basketball preseason.
“Under Rick Barnes, Tennessee has had three consecutive seasons with players who averaged at least 18 points per game,” Medcalf writes. “Wake Forest transfer Juke Harris, who scored 25 points or more in 11 games last season, could make it four in a row. Joined by former VCU star Terrence Hill Jr. and other double-figure scorers from the transfer portal, the Vols are poised to change the offensive output for a team that ranked 10th in the SEC in efficiency in 2025-26.”
The other nine contenders from Medcalf and Jeff Borzello include Florida, Duke, Illinois, UConn, Texas, Michigan, Michigan State, Arizona, and Louisville.
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“I love this time of year,” Barnes said last month during summer workouts. “I think that when you’ve got a group of guys that wanna be good, I think they embrace it, too. You talk about being forged in fire, you know, you gotta turn it up every day. You gotta get the furnace hot, and you gotta get ’em to understand what’s coming. We know what’s coming. Our schedule, what we have in front of us.
“But yeah, I think they’ve embraced it. We haven’t had any type of attitude situation. Guys are doing what they’re doing, not only out here, but in the weight room, where there’s a lot of team bonding going on there, and just looking out for each other. We’ve got a good group of guys, but we’ve got a long way to go, like you’d expect this time of year. But up to this point, I would say we’re very pleased with them.”
While Tennessee hasn’t gone and rebuilt through the portal in the past as heavily as it did this offseason, experts around the league aren’t knocking the Vols too much for a change in routine – for the most part. ESPN’s Jeff Borzello has Tennessee ranked No. 6 in his early rankings, while CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein has Tennessee at No. 10. Additionally, CBS Sports’ Gary Parrish has Tennessee at No. 15 in his early rankings. In what’s probably the most surprising early selection of them all, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has Tennessee as a 5-seed in early Bracketology projections this summer.
Tennessee Basketball wraps up summer workouts this week, which means that the upcoming college season isn’t all too far away. The Vols will officially open up the 2026-2027 season against Wofford in the Food City Center on Nov. 3.
