*****Does Tennessee have a transfer blueprint? (NOT READY JUST A START)******
Nothing has changed college basketball as dramatically in the last several decades as the advent of the transfer portal. Tennessee fans, after the wildly entertaining Dalton Knecht experience, are more familiar than most with the impact transfers can have on a program.
It’s an established fact that if you’re going to be good in college basketball in the current era, you not only had better be successful recruiting the transfer portal, you had better successfully incorporate the talent you add through the portal into your existing roster during the offseason.
Nobody did that better than Rick Barnes and Tennessee a year ago. The Vols blended Knecht—as well as valuable reserve Jordan Gainey—into a veteran roster that won the SEC regular season title and reached the Elite Eight.
All Knecht did was win SEC Player of the Year Award while becoming the program’s fourth consensus All-American.
Tennessee may not have a newcomer that’s going to make a Knecht-level impact, but the fortunes of the Vols season will most definitely hinge on what kind of team Barnes is able to construct from his returning core and four promising transfers.
Tennessee added some coveted targets from the portal to augment it’s returning veterans; guard Chaz Lanier, bigs Igor Milicic and Felix Okpara along with wing/forward Darlinstone Dubar are all expected to be significant pieces of the puzzle for the Vols this season.
Preseason practice may have ‘officially’ started on Tuesday, but in basketball these days practice never really stops. That summer ‘offseason’ has become more important than ever due to the very real need to jump start chemistry between the newcomers and veterans.
At a program like Tennessee—where culture is more than a catchphrase—making sure that the staff is bringing in the right kind of transfers stars before they get to campus.
“I think you got to find it out about players during the (recruiting) process,” Barnes said of working to find out if someone is a fit. He added that it all starts with honesty
“I think the key to all this is being honest and transparent. I think it’s important that they (as recruits) come on campus and spend time with our players and that our players answer questions for them as well.
“Let the parents ask our players questions and make it as real as you can make it and as transparent as you can make it. And I think if you do that you can solve a lot of problems before they ever really get festered.”
Transparency is a buzz word around the Tennessee program. If guys aren’t playing or things aren’t working out the way they wished, they generally have a very clear idea why.
That kind of straight talk often appeals to transfers, older players who have heard it all and are looking for transparency.
Regardless of what shape the starting line-up eventually takes it’s safe to say that all four of the Vols’ transfer additions are going to be significant members of the rotation playing regular, heavy minutes.
The quartet of transfers all seem to fill a real need for Tennessee with a ready made niche for each.
Lanier—who averaged 19.8 ppg on 47% shooting from three last season—is penciled in to shoulder some of the heavy scoring burden and outside shooting that Knecht carried last year.
Okpara should slide in seamlessly—and even be an improvement—for Joans Aidoo as a rim protector and rebounder.
Dubar and Milicic are both versatile pieces that could serve in any number of roles.
Dubar has been working in that hybrid/undersized four role that Josiah-Jordan James played to rave reviews for years. Dubar, (listed at 6-foot-8, 211 pounds) brings some of the similar skills to the position that James brought with a little more length.
Barnes simply hasn’t had a guy like Milicic during his time in Knoxville. He’s a legit 6-foot-10 with a solid 225 pound frame, a guy capable of banging in the paint and stepping outside and making threes.
Barnes sounds a little bit like a mad scientist in talking about the different ways Tennessee could use Milicic this upcoming season. Barnes claims that the Charlotte transfer could legitimately play all five positions for Tennessee at some point.
“He’s unique and the fact that he really can play a lot of different positions, he has played a lot of different positions and he’ll be a guy that will play probably all five positions at some point in time,” Barnes said of Milcic’s versatility.
Barnes went on to add that Miclic’s varied skill set had him going to the drawing board to try and come up with different ways to incorporate that versatility.
“It’s fun to be honest with you because he allows you to do some things that maybe we haven’t done in the past and he’s gotten better with a lot of things. When I think about one thing we didn’t know, he’s a consistent rebounder, which we didn’t know that, especially offensively and very unselfish. When you got a guy with that versatility and with a mindset that he has of being unselfish, it’s fun to have because you can just mix things up with him,
Tennessee is still more than a month from the start of the season, and frankly, more than three months from when the games REALLY start to count.
In this day and age of college basketball though, preseason is probably more important than ever.
No longer are most of the new additions to your roster freshmen that you can afford to bring along slowly with maybe one exception or two.
These days new additions to your roster are more likely to be guys you’re counting on immediately to make an instant impact.
That’s certainly the case at Tennessee where the Vols have one freshman (Bishop Boswell) compared to the four upperclassmen transfer.
That’s the ‘new normal’ though, and based off last year’s results, it’s a way of coaching-life that the veteran Barnes has embraced.
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