Tennessee Basketball: How Does The Guard Rotation Look?
Tennessee's 2022-23 backcourt is going to be very experience-heavy with one wildcard mixed in.
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The Vols were blessed with a five-star freshman phenom lead ballhandler in Kennedy Chandler last season as the leader of the pack. Chandler, like Jaden Springer and Keon Johnson the year prior, was the freshman that Tennessee fans were most excited about. This year, though, there is no true freshman five-star lead guard that immediately figures to be a first-round pick in the NBA Draft in 2024. This year, Tennessee will likely have a stronger semblance to the 2020-21 team than the 2021-22 team.
This year, head coach Rick Barnes brought in a five-star wing in Julian Phillips who figures to follow Chandler, Johnson, and Springer as a first-round pick in the 2024 NBA Draft. That being said, Tennessee is not limited in their guard depth without Chandler in the fold. Barnes did add talented four-star B.J. Edwards out of Knoxville Catholic High. However, Edwards is not expected to be handed the keys the way Chandler and Springer were the last two seasons.
Instead, the 2022-23 Tennessee basketball team offers quite the balance between youth and experience. Returning are veteran ballhandlers like Santiago Vescovi, Josiah Jordan-James, and Indiana State transfer Tyreke Key. Also back are fan-favorite sophomores Zakai Zeigler and Jahmai Mashack. Then, you bring in two freshmen B.J. Edwards and D.J. Jefferson to add to the mix as well.
On the surface, this may seem like a really crowded backcourt for Rick Barnes and company. However, with the departures of both John Fulkerson and Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, it is fair to assume a lot of the lineups that Barnes uses next season will be guard-heavy in nature.
The fantastic college basketball site, Barttorvik, lists the 10 Volunteers expected to be the biggest contributors this season with over half being guards, and D.J. Jefferson not even in the fold. One cannot overlook that Tennessee could still add this year’s Zakai Zeigler over the summer to bolster the guard depth even more heading into 2022. With BHH and Fulky out, it is fair to assume Tennessee will play faster, shoot more threes, and rely on their heavy arsenal of guards to get back to where they were a season ago.
And yet, if I had to guess as of June 16 who Barnes selects for his starting five on opening night this fall, I’d suspect it would be Vescovi, Jordan-James, Phillips, Nkamhoua, and Plavsic. I don’t expect that group to lead the team in minutes, but I would expect Barnes to start big and adjust accordingly.
For Tennessee folks worried about losing Chandler without a new five-star guard in the fold, worry not. Barttorvik loves the Vols, with the site’s algorithm favoring Tennessee as the No. 3 team in the country heading into next season based on their 10 expected main contributors. Only Baylor and Gonzaga, imagine that, have a higher 2022 Projective Effective Experience number. Outside of Phillips on the win, the Vols are going to lean heavily on experience. Good teams generally do.
What this means is that Edwards and Jefferson don’t currently have a path to meaningful playing time for the 2022-23 Volunteers, which is absolutely the place you want to be if you’re Barnes. You have experience in Vescovi and Jordan-James, you have a transfer score-first veteran guard in Key, you have two sophomores in Mashack and Zeigler and you have two wildcard four-star freshman in Edwards and Jefferson ready if need be. Last year, Barnes was in a completely different spot with Justin Powell and Victor Bailey Jr. behind Chandler, Vescovi, and Zeigler.
The backcourt roles seem very much defined already. When Barnes subs, Jordan-James will slide down for Key or Zeigler to enter the fold. The pressure of Vescovi, Key and Zeigler, and Jordan-James on the floor with one another is a four-man lineup to watch, both offensively and defensively early in the season. The Vols will likely lean heavily on a three-guard mix with Nkamhoua playing a lot as an undersized five so that the Vols can throw as many guard-heavy lineups out there as possible. The Vols have too much experience in the backcourt to not lean on guard-heavy lineups for the majority of games in 2022-23.
Key is perhaps the biggest wildcard of the bunch, though. He averaged 17.1 PPG for the Sycamores last season, but he averaged 33 MPG, too. It would be incredibly surprising to see Key play the same sort of minutes with the Vols. That number may be cut in half, perhaps.
So, can Key score at a high volume at a High Major coming in from a Mid Major with less time on the floor? It’s a big question for this Tennessee team, especially when Zeigler kind of occupied that void for Tennessee as a freshman when a lot of folks expected Justin Powell or Bailey Jr. to perhaps lead the charge on that front. Key’s three-point percentage has fallen from 44 percent to 38 percent to 31 percent in his last three years at Indiana State.
With Powell, Bailey Jr., and Chandler out of the fold, one area of concern for Tennessee’s backcourt is the three-point shooting. They’ll shoot them, but will there be more nights like the tournament game against Michigan with this rotation? The hope is that Key is that tie that binds there. Barttorvik agrees as Key is expected to have the highest offensive usage on the roster in 2022-23.
But these are fun questions to have. It’s reasonable to assume Key blends in nicely and the Vols don’t miss Chandler all that much in the backcourt next season. The biggest thing, of course, is that the Vols are older and will primarily live and die with their experience with Julian Phillips sprinkled in on the wing. That’s exactly where you want to be if you want to be an elite college basketball team.
Chase Thomas is the Sports Renaissance Man, Atlanta Sports Guy and Vol For Life. He is a graduate student at the University of Tennessee and resides in Knoxville, TN. Chase obtained his undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of North Georgia. He has written for a variety of publications that include Outsider, SB Nation, VICE Sports, SI’s The Cauldron, Cox Media Group & ESPN’s TrueHoop Network. You can email him at chasethomaspodcast[at]gmail.