Tennessee basketball held its first practice open to the media Tuesday since beginning official preseason practice last week.
The first open practice isn’t as meaningful for the media this year as year’s in the past due to Tennessee’s summer open practices and three exhibition games in Italy but there were still notes and takeaways to glean.
The most noteworthy thing was the number of Tennessee players who didn’t participate in practice. Point guard Zakai Zeigler, wing D.J. Jefferson and power forwards Tobe Awaka and JP Estrella either were not at practice or worked off to the side during practice.
I wrote about the circumstances surrounding all four players’ absence earlier so you can check out the details here and I won’t touch on it anymore in this piece.
With only nine scholarship players active during Tuesday’s practice, there was an abundance of work and opportunities for all players available including freshmen Cameron Carr and Cade Phillips as well as walk ons like Colin Coyne, Grant Hurst and Kaylan Makan.
It felt like there was an emphasis from Barnes to push his team to the brink Tuesday due to the lack of substitutes. Tempo was the emphasis of the day. The Vols did three-on-three work with an eight second shot clock, five-on-five press break with a 17 second shot clock and normal scrimmage work with a 24 second shot clock.
Rick Barnes has long stated that Tennessee wants to play faster in the preseason so put me in the “I’ll believe it when I see it” boat. However, some of that tempo inspired drills is stuff I hadn’t seen before.
The best player at Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center Tuesday was Northern Colorado transfer Dalton Knecht. Knecht was red-hot shooting from the perimeter but what truly impressed me was the way he put the ball on the floor and scored at the basket.
The 6-foot-6 wing drove by defenders multiple times for dunks and had another transition dunk. The three-point shooting is no surprise but if Knecht can score in a multitude of ways at this level than he’s going to be one of Tennessee’s best players.
It was a mixed bag for fellow transfer Jordan Gainey. The USC Upstate transfer is more of a complete player than I thought and showed his ability to catch-and-shoot and shoot off the dribble in addition to scoring at the basket.
More From RTI: Everything Rick Barnes Said Tuesday Afternoon
But Gainey also drew Barnes’ ire multiple times for what appeared to be a lack of attention to detail on some things. He also struggled playing point guard during press break work.
Freshman Cameron Carr earned some anger from Barnes including when he lost his man on a baseline cut which led to an easy alley-oop. It was my first chance to watch Carr after he missed the summer with an injury. The shooting guard has a nice shooting stroke and has really impressive length which should make him a good defender in time.
Barnes said earlier Tuesday that they had every intention on redshirting freshman Cade Phillips this season but that Estrella’s injury and Phillips strong play has them second guessing that thought. The power forward didn’t do much overly impressive but was just solid all around and earned the least amount of criticism from Barnes of any other freshman.
The 6-foot-9, 197-pound freshman did look physically overwhelmed at times battling Jonas Aidoo in the post.
No one drew Barnes’ ire more than redshirt freshman Freddie Dilione Tuesday. This isn’t overly surprising. The young guard is extremely talented offensively but it still learning a lot of things and has a lot of work to do on the defensive end of the court.
That talent and those defensive miscues were both on display at Thompson-Boling Arena Tuesday.
Returning contributors Santiago Vescovi, Josiah-Jordan James, Jonas Aidoo and Jahmai Mashack showed a lot of what we’ve come to expect from them.
Mashack and Aidoo were strong defensively with some dominant moments but weren’t consistently effective offensively. Mashack had a couple strong finishes around the basket and Aidoo had some tough bounces on jump shots.
Vescovi looked like the low key star that he is, knocking down open threes and doing so many small things well that you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t paying attention. It was a tough shooting day for Josiah-Jordan James but I was impressed with his leadership, especially in a sequence with Dilione.
Barnes told the media earlier on Tuesday that James and Vescovi will be judged by their leadership in the preseason.
