After being considered one of the most active teams on the market this offseason, Rick Barnes’ Tennessee Volunteers have jumped up 10 spots in ESPN’s updated way-too-early college basketball rankings.
ESPN analyst Jeff Borzello has Tennessee leaping up from No. 17 to No. 7 in his updated rankings with the roster moves that Barnes has made.
“Tennessee is certainly one of the biggest portal winners of the offseason thus far, landing Jordan Gainey (South Carolina Upstate), Chris Ledlum (Harvard) and Dalton Knecht (Northern Colorado), while also getting all-SEC guard Santiago Vescovi back for another year,” Borzello wrote. “The Volunteers should have more perimeter pop than they’ve had the past few seasons, combined with what should be an elite defense when Zakai Zeigler is healthy.”
Perimeter pop, as Borzello put it, is certainly something that Tennessee needed to add this offseason after finishing in the bottom half of the SEC in terms of points per game (71.8) last season. Getting a talented wing player like Knecht and adding in a promising guard like Gainey should help Tennessee in that department.
More from RTI: Analyzing Tennessee Basketball’s Roster Crunch After A Successful Week In The Transfer Portal
The Vols are the highest-ranked team from the Southeastern Conference in the latest rankings despite a trio of teams right in the rearview mirror. Jeff Borzello has Arkansas at No. 10, Kentucky at No. 11, and Alabama at No. 12. And lastly, the Texas A&M Aggies follow at No. 17 as the fifth and final SEC team in the rankings.
Duke, who had their season end at the hands of Tennessee in the round of 32 this past March, comes in as the overall No. 1 projection according to ESPN.
This also comes just about one week after ESPN analyst Joe Lunardi placed Tennessee as a No. 2 seed in his way-too-early March Madness projections. Tennessee had one of three two-seed projections from the SEC along with Alabama and Arkansas.
“It’s a good thing there are still scholarship limits in college basketball, otherwise there’s no telling how many players teams like Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee would sign from the transfer portal,” Lunardi wrote. “No set of conference rivals has hit the portal harder than these three SEC teams, which now rank fifth, sixth and eighth overall on our new seed list. Throw in Texas A&M at No. 16 overall and that’s four SEC teams on the top four lines of the latest bracket.”
After starting the 2022-2023 season as the preseason No. 11 team in the country, Tennessee did not drop out of the Top 25 at any point this past season. The Vols spent 11 straight weeks ranked in the Top 10 and eventually ended the final week as the No. 20 team in the AP poll.
Take a closer look at Tennessee Basketball’s off-season roster movement by clicking here.
