This is a weekend that a lot of college basketball coaches around the country like. It’s an evaluation window, but players are only playing with their high school teams (not their summer/travel teams) in ‘showcase’ type events in each state.
Rick Barnes will be in Indianapolis on Friday to watch Braylen Mullins from Greenfield, Ind. Mullins is a big time shooting guard who could be certainly be difficult to pull out of Indiana but the Vols are going to make a run at him.
On Saturday Barnes and the staff will shift locations to Washington D.C. where the main focus will be 2025 four star guard Acaden Lewis from Sidwell Friends School in Baltimore.
Lewis is a guy that absolutely blew up this spring. He didn’t exactly come out of nowhere, but he’s gone from a nice looking top-100 player to one of the more coveted guards in the class. Since the spring evaluation period he’s received offers from Kentucky, UNC and UCONN in addition to Tennessee.
While in the D.C. area Tennessee will also see 2025 point guard prospect Nyk Lewis from powerhouse Gonzaga High School and four-star wing Nate Ament.
We mentioned five-star Chris Cenac last week as a guy that Tennessee was paying a lot of attention to at the NBPA Top-100 Camp in Orlando. That’s going to be a highly competitive recruitment to say the least, but keep an eye on the Vols perhaps laying in the weeds there.
Offseason workouts are underway for the current squad minus incoming transfer Igor Milicic. Milicic is back home hoping to earn a spot on the Polish national team.
Milicic is one of 17 players vying for one of 12 roster spots on the team that will take part in next month’s Olympics in Paris. Interestingly, Milcic’s father is the coach of the Polish national team.
Tennessee would love to have the whole roster together, but as someone close to the program told us this week, Milicic will benefit tremendously from his experience this month whether he ends making the final team or not.
Summer workouts have been underway for less than two weeks, so we aren’t going to hype anyone too much at this stage.
With that said, we’ve heard that the staff has been pleasantly surprised with incoming freshman Bishop Boswell. No one is suggesting that he’s going to light the world on fire this season, but the sense seems to be that he may be closer to being able to contribute than might have been previously thought.
Another guy who has generated some early buzz is Felix Okpara who has impressed with his high motor and his athleticism.
