War Room: Vols home opener notes, recruiting, hoops and more
We begin this edition of the War Room as we always do. The War Room is a collective effort of Tennessee notes and news gathered throughout the week by the Volquest staff that is located only on the General’s Quarters. And now, it’s on with the news.
Tennessee opens Neyland Stadium Saturday night as they host Austin-Peay before heading into conference play at Florida next week.
The Governors struggled greatly in week, one losing at Southern Illinois but offensive coordinator Joey Halzle said it will be another test for Joe Milton’s eyes in sorting through a multiple defense.
“They are a good defensive team,” offensive coordinator Halzle said. “They get into a bunch of different structures. They from drop 8 to cover zero to pressure to the field and pressure to the boundary. We are going to have to be really sound in our protections and we are going to have to be really sound in our run game indentification because they are going to present a number of different pictures. We were watching the Southern Illinois game with the quarterbacks and the first 10 plays they had 9 different coverages. So you are going to have to be really defined with your eyes in this one because they will make you look bad if you are just trying to wing it.”
Tennessee was elated with Milton’s eyes and play Saturday against Virginia.
Of course the big news of the week is the injury to linebacker Keenan Pili. The significance of the injury came as a surprise to everyone because no one, including Pili, is exactly sure when the injury occurred. While the injury is not season ending, Pili will miss some significant time which means Elijah Herring and Arion Carter have to fill the void.
Herring played a bunch of snaps in the opener and was effective with four tackles. Herring’s challenge is to continue to grow playing in space. That’s the area that Pili had surprised the Tennessee staff in with his play during the preseason. Just a tough, tough break for Pili who has battled his way back from a torn ACL.
On the offensive line, the staff was pleased with the entire line and really pleased with the play of Andrej Karic and Ollie Lane at center. They were also pretty pleased with Dayne Davis who got his first work at center. Look for the rotation to continue this week. Although, it might not be as frequent. Lane was a bit under the weather late last week which is part of the reason why you saw Davis so early.
Both will play center in the first half this week. Neither Davis nor Lane have gotten any work at guard so when Mays comes back it will be interesting to see what the guard competition looks like. Lane was the clubhouse leader for the left guard spot before Mays went out of the line up and again everyone seemed pleased with Karic’s play last week. This will be a different test because Austin-Peay will try and disguise things a bit more pre-snap.
Tennessee is honoring Condredge Holloway this weekend with their Artful Dodger smokey grey uniforms. Holloway has visited with the team this week as well as giving a bit of a history lesson to the Vols.
Wi-Fi is here at least partially in Neyland Stadium. The Wi-Fi in the lower bowl and around the gate areas is done. The access points throughout the stadium have been installed, it is now a matter of conduit and pulling cable through the upper deck, but many fans should enjoy their phone experience in Neyland Stadium. It’s never been tested with a full stadium so there will be some things to improve on from the home opener, but it should be much better in a good number of areas.
Recruiting
It’s been a week of some not so good developments with the remaining targets on the board.
Danny Okoye is coming off his Oklahoma trip and from all indications, the Sooners have grabbed a bunch of momentum. If he was picking today, I would definitely take the home state team. Tennessee has continued to talk to him and hope to get him on campus at the end of the month still, but unless that happens their chances have dwindled dramatically.
Then there is IMG offensive tackle Jordan Seaton, who did a 16 minute interview with Josh Newberg of On3 this week, and never mentioned Tennessee once. Tennessee has been steadily talking to him and the plan was for him to visit the UTSA game, but he recently talked to Tennessee about switching that weekend to visit for the Georgia weekend in November. It’s hard to see him visiting at all with him mentioning so many teams, but yet not mentioning the Vols.
Virginia linebacker Chris Cole is set to come to town late Friday night after his high school game. He will be in town for basically about 24 hours before he heads back to make his decision on Sunday afternoon. USC feels really confident after his official visit last weekend and believes it’s between them and Georgia. Can a quick trip to Rocky Top change that? Only time will tell, but it certainly feels like Tennessee will need to pull out all the stops this weekend to get good news on Sunday.
Tennessee linebackers coach Brian Jean Mary and running backs coach Jerry Mack will be in Virginia later tonight to watch Cole and Peyton Lewis play in Salem.
At tight end, we spoke with Roger Saleapaga earlier this week. He is set for about seven official visits this fall and told us he doesn’t plan on announcing until December 17th. Oregon and Tennessee are at the top for him but this one has a long way to go and it’s frankly way too early to think anyone has an edge. He will visit Tennessee for the Georgia game just one week after seeing USC play at Oregon.
While Tennessee may have lost some momentum with St. Louis wide receiver Ryan Wingo, Kelsey Pope will be in attendance later tonight to watch him play. We will see if anything comes out of that as Wingo toys with making an early decision or not.
Tennessee head coach, Josh Heupel and defensive backs coach Willie Martinez will be in Chattanooga tonight to see the Baylor and Lipscomb football game. The news of Deuce Knight’s transfer out of Lipscomb was a surprise to some but the staff wasn’t going there to watch him specifically like they did George MacIntyre last week. MacIntyre remains the top quarterback on the board in the 2025 class in our opinion.
Grayson (Ga.) defensive lineman Nasir Smith continues to have positive dialogue with Tennessee. He is scheduled to visit later this month, and the Vols continue to lead the way here, in our estimation. We are told other schools continue to check in on him after a solid start to his senior season. A decision around mid-October still feels likely at this point.
Colorado will get Kam Mikell to campus this weekend for an official visit, and we believe this is a big visit for him. Deion Sanders’ program has a lot of buzz at the moment, and they are going to put the full court press on over the weekend to try and make a strong move. Georgia tried to shut him down at one point, and it didn’t work, so there is reason to believe he continues to stick to his timeframe of making a decision later in the fall.
Still, this is certainly a visit to keep an eye on. In talking with Mikell throughout the week, it does continue to feel like his best relationships may be with Tennessee, at this point, but he is being recruited as hard as any uncommitted prospect in the country right now.
Notable Visitors
Kaleb Beasley
Tae Harris
Tristan Anderson
Vanzale Hinton
Ma’khi Jones
Carson Gentle
Chris Cole
Edwin Spillman
Mantrez Walker
Tucker Kattus
Jordan Ross
CJ May
Taeshawn Alston
Justin Baker
Gregory Peacock
Boo Carter
Caden Piening
Dillon Alfred
Hoops
It’s a big weekend for a Tennessee program that doesn’t have a big 2024 recruiting board. Perhaps the Vols’ top target in this cycle is point guard Bishop Boswell from Charlotte.
Boswell has previously taken official visits to Xavier and Missouri (in June) and was at Wake Forest officially last weekend. For Tennessee it was big for him to get through that visit to Wake without committing.
Boswell has been a priority target for the Demon Deacons since they offered him during his sophomore year. Tennessee didn’t offer until July, but the Vols have been working hard to make up ground. The buzz in recruiting circles is that Wake pushed hard for a commitment during Boswell’s visit but didn’t close the deal.
The fact that he’s keeping his date to visit Tennessee and didn’t pop last weekend is a victory for the Vols. I wouldn’t read that as meaning Wake Forest is out, but the Vols are certainly alive and kicking. After his trip to Knoxville Boswell has one final official visit scheduled to Georgia the following weekend.
Many think this one is coming down to Wake and Tennessee but we’ve heard some whispers that Xavier is a dark horse to watch.
The Vols are playing a waiting game with four-star wing Chase McCarty who officially visited two weeks ago. McCarty still has five official visits to take this fall before he says he’ll look to trim his list.
The final—as of now—official visit scheduled with a class of 2024 prospect is Las Vegas forward Pharaoh Compton who will visit on Sept. 23. Compton has a final five of Tennessee, LSU, San Diego St., Iowa and UNLV.
Tennessee is putting in some early work on the 2025 class. Over the next month top-five center Caleb Wilson out of Atlanta, top-50 center Malachi Moreno from Georgetown, Ky., top-20 point guard Aaron Rowe from Link Academy in Missouri, and top-50 point guard Jeremiah Fears out of Illinois are all scheduled to be in town as visitors.
Preseason workouts are underway as the staff gets the roster re-acclimated following a little break after the European trip. The on floor work with coaches at the moment has almost exclusively been ‘5-on-0’ as the staff has been focusing on installation on both offense and defense and going back over everything that was put in during the summer.
That’s not to say that there hasn’t been any scrimmage work, but that’s not the focus at this early stage.
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