Fresh off the program’s 11th SEC regular season crown—its sixth outright SEC championship and first since 2007-08—and its second-ever Elite Eight berth, the Tennessee men’s basketball program hosted it’s annual media day Thursday, ahead of the highly-anticipated 2024-25 season.
Led by head coach Rick Barnes, who is set to begin his 10th season at the helm in Knoxville this year, the Volunteers feature a balanced blend of seasoned veterans and promising young talent.
Tennessee’s 2024-25 roster features 15 players (11 scholarship student-athletes) representing 10 states, as well as Croatia and Nigeria. UT has two fifth-year players, four seniors, two juniors, three sophomores and four true freshmen, three of whom are walk-ons.
Coming off arguably its best season ever, the Tennessee men’s basketball team brings back seven players, including senior guard Zakai Zeigler, the reigning SEC Defensive Player of the Year. The Volunteers went 27-9 (14-4 SEC) in 2023-24 and finished a program-best fifth nationally in both major polls.
Barnes welcomes five new scholarship players to the squad, including a quartet of Division I transfers, to this year’s roster.
Over the last four seasons (2020-24), the Volunteers own a 57-7 (.891) overall record at Food City Center. In nine seasons under head coach Rick Barnes, the Volunteers are 122-24 (.836) at Food City Center. Twice during the Barnes era, Tennessee has gone undefeated at home: 18-0 in 2018-19 and 16-0 in 2021-22.
Tennessee’s first home action of the 2024-25 season comes in an exhibition contest versus Indiana on Sunday, Oct. 27 at 3 p.m. ET. Its first regular season contest is set for Monday, Nov. 4, against Gardner-Webb at 7 p.m.
Fans interested in purchasing single-game tickets to watch the Vols this season are encouraged to click HERE. Vol Hoops season tickets are already sold out, but fans interested in learning more about season tickets for future years can do so by clicking HERE.
Following media day festivities, the team took to the Food City Center for practice.
Quotables Barnes’ Thursday press conference can be found below. To view the press conference online, click HERE. For quotables from select student-athletes, click HERE.
Tennessee Head Coach Rick Barnes
On where the team has improved the most during the offseason…
“I would say versatility. We know we have different ways we can play with different matchups. We’ve got bigs, smalls and some in between too. We’re still trying to figure out what the best way is to go for the most part. We just really need to get everyone on the court together at the same time. Overall, we’ve got terrific comradery within our team. We’ve got a group of guys that continue to work to get better. The attitude has been good. I do know that they know that they have to continue to get better, and we have gotten better from scrimmage to scrimmage.”
On if Zakai Zeigler is doing anything new that surprises him…
“I don’t think anything he does (is new). It’s the expectation that he has for himself and that we have for him every day. When he has a tough day, he is so brutally hard on himself and makes it tougher than it needs to be. He’s just so competitive within himself. He wants to play the perfect game. He wants to do everything he can to get guys the ball where they need it. I think when he gets himself in trouble is when he tries to take too much on himself. He is starting to understand his teammates more and more. A year ago, they understood and quickly figured out how that team needed to play. This team’s not quite there yet, but I think when Zakai gets there, the other guys will follow.”
On his confidence that the team will take a step offensively…
“I do think versatility, and we’ve worked hard in a lot of different areas. We’re really happy with where we’re moving with our inside game and guys we can look to. In the past, people have pretty much said ‘We’re going to let you play two-on-two with Zakai in the post.’ I think we’ve made really good strides there because of how hard our post guys have worked. We know what Zakai is going to do and Jordan Gainey. Another guy that has really worked in the last two weeks and who got off to a great start this summer is Bishop. He has been playing really well. Then, Zakai came back and it’s a whole new experience for him having to deal with Zakai every day. But in the last two weeks, he’s made as many strides defensively as anybody on our team. He’s highly competitive. He wants to win. He’s still trying to figure out what we’re doing from an offensive situation. But defensively, his effort and rebounding have been really impressive in the last two weeks.”
On coaching changes that have been made over the past couple of years…
“I don’t know if we’ve changed, we always adjust. I will say that. We’re constantly adjusting. I mean even this time a year ago, we had no idea Dalton would do what he did. We knew that he had the ability offensively to do some things that we haven’t had, but where he was defensively, I’d tell him, ‘I don’t care how many times you score the ball. If you’re going to give up that many points, what are we doing here? We’re just trading your baskets for their baskets.’ What we did know was how hard he was willing to work. So, players will make coaches adjust. Good players make coaches adjust, they will. It can happen this year. At the end of the year, we ended up doing things that we hadn’t even thought about doing this time of the year. But, from the way the season settled in, the way we started growing as a team and when we started doing this, we added stuff trying to take advantage of guys. And I will imagine that’s what’s going to happen to this team. I’m not sure exactly who with yet, but I know it needs to happen with this team. We need some guys to show us consistently what we can count on every time they go out there. As a coaching staff, we will make the necessary adjustments and take advantage of it.”
