Last week, Rivals.com updated their recruiting rankings for the 2020 class in basketball. In the update, Vol commit Keon Johnson jumped up 16 overall spots and earned his fifth star. On Wednesday of this week, Johnson picked up his fifth star in another rankings update.
247Sports updated their basketball recruiting rankings on Wednesday, and Johnson again added a fifth star to his ratings. Johnson rose six spots in 247Sports’ overall rankings, moving him to No. 20 overall and giving him a fifth star in the process.
Johnson is now a consensus five-star prospect in the 2020 cycle.
Last recruiting cycle, Tennessee signed five-star Josiah-Jordan James to their roster. But James wasn’t a consensus five-star; though he was a five-star on Rivals and in the 247Sports Composite rankings, he finished just outside five-star range on 247Sports at No. 29 overall.
You have to go all the way back to 2013 to find the last time the Vols ended up signing a consensus five-star in men’s basketball. Robert Hubbs III signed with Tennessee in the 2013 class as a five-star prospect on both Rivals and 247Sports, coming in just inside the top 25 on both services.
Johnson is now the No. 20 overall prospect on 247Sports, the No. 17 prospect on Rivals, and is currently the No. 23 prospect in the 247Sports Composite rankings, though it looks like the composite rankings haven’t updated yet as of the posting of this article.
But Johnson wasn’t the only Vol commit to see a rise in his rankings.
Small forward Corey Walker, who committed to Tennessee back on March 3rd of this year, jumped up 10 spots from No. 47 overall to No. 37 overall in the 247Sports rankings, putting him only a few spots outside of five-star range. That bump also moved him to No. 30 overall in the 247Sports Composite rankings, and he’s the No. 24 overall recruit and a five-star in the Rivals rankings.
With the update, Tennessee now has two players ranked inside the top 40 overall prospects in the 247Sports Composite rankings committed to them. The last time the Vols brought in multiple top-40 players in a single class was back in 2010 when Tobias Harris (No. 6) and Jordan McRae (No. 40) both signed with the Vols. Tennessee also signed top-100 overall prospect and four-star guard Trae Golden in that 2010 class.
The Vols already have two elite players committed to them in the 2020 cycle, but they’re in on a few other highly-rated prospects as well. Some of those players also saw some movement in 247Sports’ update.
Five-star guard Jaden Springer dropped three spots to No. 16 overall, but he kept his five-star ranking and is still a top-20 recruit. The Vols are one of the finalists for the elite guard out of IMG Academy. Four-star guard Matthew Murrell — who is originally from Memphis but now plays for IMG Academy — rose 20 spots to No. 42 overall. Tennessee isn’t as heavily involved with Murrell as others, but he’s still a target on their board. Four-star power forward PJ Hall climbed five spots to No. 65 overall. Just like with Springer, the Vols are also finalists with Hall, a 6-foot-9, 220-pound forward from Roebuck, South Carolina.
Samson Ruzhentsev from Hamilton Heights in Chattanooga dropped one spot to No. 52 overall, and center Dylan Cardwell at Oak Hill Academy in Virginia dropped 16 spots to No. 188 overall. The Vols’ most recent offer on the recruiting trail, center Bradley Ezewiro out of California, fell 19 spots to No. 206 overall.
