Hoops Preview: #18 Tennessee vs. Lenoir-Rhyne Exhibition

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – The 18th-ranked Tennessee basketball team hits the hardwood for the first time in 2021-22 on Saturday, taking on Lenoir-Rhyne in an exhibition game at Thompson-Boling Arena. Tip-off is set for 3 p.m. ET on SEC Network+.

Saturday’s game can streamed online through SEC Network+/WatchESPN. Visit espn.com/watch or download the WatchESPN app to view the game on a computer or mobile device. Roger Hoover (play-by-play), Steve Hamer (analyst) and Kasey Funderburg (reporter) will have the call.

Fans can also listen live on their local Vol Network affiliate to catch Bob Kesling and Bert Bertelkamp describing the action.

Tennessee is coming off of a season in which it finished 18-9, recorded a fourth-place SEC finish and earned a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The new-look Vols are set to add the nation’s second-ranked recruiting class as well as return a group of experienced veterans to this year’s squad, led by super senior forward John Fulkerson and guards Victor Bailey Jr., Josiah-Jordan James and Santiago Vescovi.

The 112th season of Tennessee Basketball officially begins on Tuesday, Nov. 9, when the Vols host UT Martin (7 p.m. ET on SEC Network).

THE SERIES
• Lenoir-Rhyne University is located in Rick Barnes‘ hometown of Hickory, North Carolina. An NCAA Division II member, Lenoir-Rhyne competes alongside local schools Carson-Newman, Lincoln Memorial and Tusculum in the South Atlantic Conference.
• Barnes attended Lenoir-Rhyne (then Lenoir-Rhyne College) as a basketball student-athlete, and he earned his degree in Health and Physical Education in 1977.
• Barnes was named the college’s Distinguished Alumnus in 1997, was inducted into the Lenoir-Rhyne College Hall of Fame in 2002 and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree in 2005.
• Tennessee hosted the Bears for a regular-season game on Nov. 6, 2018, with the sixth-ranked Vols winning by a score of 86-41.

LAST SEASON
• Tennessee finished last season with an 18-9 (10-7 SEC) record and made its third consecutive appearance in the NCAA Tournament.
• Senior forward John Fulkerson sustained a season-ending facial fracture and concussion in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals. In April, he announced that he would run it back one last time as a super senior.
• The phenomenal freshman duo of Jaden Springer and Keon Johnson were UT’s top scorers last season, and both were selected in the first round of July’s NBA Draft.
• Departed senior Yves Pons finished his four-year career ranked eighth in program history with 137 blocks. He then signed a free-agent contract with the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies after an impressive NBA Summer League performance.
• Due to the pandemic, attendance at Thompson-Boling Arena was capped at 4,191. The venue’s full capacity is 21,678.

LAYUP LINES
• Tennessee enters Saturday’s game with a 79-18 all-time record in exhibition contests, including a 62-10 mark on the U.S. mainland.
• The 2021-22 campaign is Tennessee’s 35th season in Thompson-Boling Arena. UT owns a 409-138 record in 547 games at TBA (exhibition results do not count toward official win totals).
• With sales of 13,525 to date, this marks the third straight full-capacity year that UT has exceeded 13,000 in season-ticket sales.

A WIN WOULD…
• Give the Volunteers a 10-0 record in exhibition games under head coach Rick Barnes.
• Extend Tennessee’s exhibition win streak to 21 games.

ABOUT LENOIR-RHYNE
• Located three hours from Knoxville in Hickory, North Carolina, Lenoir-Rhyne University has an enrollment of just over 2,000 students.
• Lenoir-Rhyne competes in Division II’s South Atlantic Conference, which includes East Tennessee schools Carson-Newman, Lincoln Memorial and Tusculum.
• The Bears played 16 games during the 2020-21 COVID season, posting a 9-7 (8-6 SAC) record.
• Lenoir-Rhyne is replacing its top five scorers from last season’s roster. Overall, the Bears return just 19.6 percent of last season’s scoring production.
• Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes is a Lenoir-Rhyne alumnus. Barnes is a Hickory native who played for the Bears from 1974-77. During those same years, Ernie Grunfeld and Bernard King were starring at Tennessee.
• Barnes earned a bachelor’s degree in health and physical education from Lenoir-Rhyne in 1977 and was named the college’s Distinguished Alumnus in 1997. He was inducted into the Lenoir-Rhyne College Hall of Fame on Oct. 5, 2002, and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Lenoir-Rhyne on May 7, 2005.
• Tennessee Director of Player Development Bryan Lentz began his coaching career at Lenoir-Rhyne, working for nine years alongside his father, legendary Lenoir-Rhyne head coach John Lentz. During that stretch, the Bears won five South Atlantic Conference regular-season titles, one SAC Tournament title and made to five NCAA Division II Tournament appearances. In his final two seasons at Lenoir-Rhyne, Bryan served as the Bears’ associate head coach.
• John Lentz was the head coach at Lenoir-Rhyne for 29 years and was college roommates at L-R with Barnes.

VOLS A PRESEASON TOP-20 TEAM
• Tennessee earned top-20 status in both of the only major 2021-22 preseason polls. The Vols were ranked 18th in the Associated Press poll and tied for 17th in the preseason Coaches Poll.
• Since the start of the 2017-18 season, the Vols have been ranked for 54 weeks, including 26 weeks in the top 10 and four weeks at No. 1.
• Tennessee’s position in other preseason polls: Matt Norlander/CBS (No. 16), Sports Illustrated (No. 20), Dick Vitale/ESPN (No. 22).
• During his stellar career as a head coach, Rick Barnes‘ teams have spent 271 total weeks in the Associated Press Top 25 rankings.

ROSTER BREAKDOWN
• The Vols’ 2021-22 roster features 18 players (14 scholarship student-athletes) representing eight states as well as Democratic Republic of the Congo, Finland, France, Serbia and Uruguay.
• There are six Vols who hail from the state of Tennessee, two from North Carolina and one each from California, Georgia, Kentucky, New York, South Carolina and Texas.
• UT has three seniors, five juniors, three sophomores and seven freshmen.
• Eight Vols stand 6-5 or shorter, and 10 players are 6-6 or taller. For the first time in program history, the Vols have six players who are 6-9 or taller.
• Tennessee’s 14 scholarship players combine to boast 426 games played (32.8 per man) and 178 starts (13.7 per man). Removing freshmen from that group boosts those averages to 60.9 games played and 25.4 starts per man.

FULKERSON, AIDOO OUT SATURDAY
• Tennessee will be without two scholarship players for Saturday’s exhibition.
• Super senior forward John Fulkerson is out with a fractured thumb on his left (shooting) hand. The injury happened during an intrasquad scrimmage on Oct. 16.
• True freshman forward Jonas Aidoo recently returned to limited practice activity following an illness that sidelined him for a couple weeks, but he will not be cleared to play Saturday.

TENNESSEE WELCOMES ELITE CROP OF NEWCOMERS
• For the second year in a row, Tennessee welcomes a consensus top-five recruiting class to Rocky Top.
• UT’s Class of 2021 was rated No. 2 nationally by 247Sports.com, No. 3 nationally by Rivals and No. 4 by ESPN.
• This talented class of newcomers includes five-star prospects Kennedy Chandler (Rivals No. 7, 247Sports No. 8, ESPN No. 8), Jonas Aidoo (Rivals No. 21, 247Sports No. 40, ESPN No. 50) and Brandon Huntley-Hatfield (Rivals No. 32, 247Sports No. 19, ESPN No. 19) as well as Jahmai Mashack, Quentin Diboundje, Handje Tamba and Zakai Zeigler.
• The incoming crop was bolstered this past summer when 6-6 guard Justin Powell—an ESPN top-100 recruit from the Class of 2020—joined the Vols as an intraconference transfer from Auburn.

BARNES ADDS TWO NEW ASSISTANTS
• With former assistant coaches Desmond Oliver and Kim English landing head coaching jobs at ETSU and George Mason, respectively, this past spring, Rick Barnes has welcomed two new assistants to his Tennessee staff.
• Barnes first hired veteran coach Justin Gainey, who most recently was the associate head coach at Marquette. A former star point guard at NC State (1996-2000), Gainey boasts 15 years of Division I coaching and administrative experience in the ACC, Pac-12, Big East and beyond.
• Shortly after securing Gainey, Barnes handpicked Rod Clark to round out his coaching staff. A young and energetic rising star in the profession, Clark, 28, is entering just his third season as a collegiate assistant. He spent last season at Austin Peay in Clarksville.