In an era where several long-time coaches have retired rather than contend with NIL and the transfer portal, Tennessee’s Rick Barnes, who’s 70 and just finished his 38th year as a head coach, is well suited for the challenging new conditions.
Barnes’ calm demeanor is his biggest weapon. In his long career, he has seen it all. Barnes doesn’t get sped up or rattled when it comes to filling assistant positions or recruiting. His staff, using analytics and video, works year-round identifying potential players who would be good fits for the culture of the program, and then filters them through a proprietary ranking system. That data is then handed to Barnes, who makes his own evaluations and decides what players to pursue. The results in recent seasons have been among the best in the game
In 2023-24, Tennessee signed Northern Colorado transfer Dalton Knecht. The 6-foot-6 Knecht already had advanced scoring skills, but he wanted to get even better offensively and improve his defense under the taskmaster Barnes. Knecht led Tennessee to the Elite Eight and was a consensus first-team All-American, the winner of the Julius Erving Small Forward of the Year Award, the SEC Player of the Year and the 17th pick in the NBA Draft.
In search of a replacement for Knecht in the spring of 2024, Tennessee found Chaz Lanier at North Florida. It didn’t seem possible Lanier could have the impact Knecht did, but he came close. Lanier was a Wooden All-American, the Jerry West Shooting Guard of the Year Award winner, an All-SEC pick, and he broke Tennessee legend Chris Lofton’s record for three-pointers in a season (Lofton made 118 in 2007-08; Lanier finished with 123).
After a second consecutive Elite Eight appearance, Barnes faced his biggest personnel replacement task yet. Not only did Tennessee have to find the next Knecht/Lanier, it had to sign another point guard after the graduation of Zakai Zeigler, who leaves with a handful of school and SEC records. Most notably, the consensus All-American Zeigler’s 275 assists broke the school and league record for a season. The Vols also lost sixth man and double-figure scorer Jordan Gainey and starting forward Igor Milicic.
Barnes and his staff didn’t wait for the NCAA Tournament to end before getting to work. Three days before they were to play Kentucky in the Sweet 16, the Vols landed a commitment from Troy Henderson, a 6-foot-1 point guard who had originally signed with Fordham but re-opened his recruitment after coach Keith Urgo was fired. Henderson helped lead John Marshall High School of Richmond, Va. to the 2025 2A state championship. In the two seasons before that. Henderson’s Lancaster High School won Virginia 1A titles. Barnes previously secured commitments from two other four-star freshmen in Amari Evans, a 6-foot-5 guard who plays for Overtime Elite, and DeWayne Brown, a 6-foot-8 forward from Hoover, Ala.
But Barnes and his assistants knew they needed more fortification at the point. After former Maryland coach Kevin Willard left for Villanova, 6-foot-1 junior point guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie, who transferred last year from Belmont, entered the portal. Tennessee fans might consider it blasphemous for anyone to say the Vols won’t miss Zeigler, but Gillespie, who averaged 14.7 points, 4.8 assists and 1.9 steals and shot 40.7 percent from three-point range, has the skills to make that happen. The Portal Repport rates Gillespie the No. 14 player in the portal.
Like Lanier, Gillespie is from Tennessee — he played high school ball at Greeneville — and that played a huge part in Tennessee landing him.
“He wanted to come home,” Barnes told Hoops HQ. “His mama wanted him to come home. He bleeds orange. He’s a former football player (who received scholarship offers from, among others, Virginia Tech and Vanderbilt), which I love. You know he’s tough. And he knows he’s got to get even better. But again, what I love about him is he wants to be a Tennessee Volunteer.”
The same could be said about 6-foot-8, 265-pound sophomore Jaylen Carey, who made the almost unheard of move from Vanderbilt to Tennessee. Though Tennessee has a solid front line returning, Barnes couldn’t resist the opportunity to sign Carey, the son of a former NFL player who’s strong and aggressive in the post. Carey played his freshman season at James Madison. “We needed somebody with girth,” Barnes said. “Somebody we could throw it to in the post and get easy baskets.”
The Vols aren’t yet finished retooling. They’re still in the mix for the highest-rated high school player remaining, 6-foot-8 Nate Ament, who is rated No. 4 in the 247Sports Composite. The competition for Ament is stiff — Duke and Kentucky are in the mix — but his favorite player is Kevin Durant, who was coached at Texas by Barnes.
Regardless of whether Tennessee signs Ament, it still needs to find a couple of wing guards who can consistently make three-pointers. If the Vols do that, they’ll have the talent to make a third consecutive deep run in the NCAA Tournament.
