Two things can be true at once. Tennessee Basketball could have already had a championship-caliber team and spent too much time trying to land North Florida Ospreys transfer Chaz Lanier over potentially landing multiple options, and Lanier could be a big pickup for the Vols if he did end up there.
Well, the Vols’ shot for the stars, and while the risk may not have outweighed the reward, the risk factor is obviously eliminated if it pays off. It paid off. Lanier, who is originally an in-state product, having graduated from Ensworth in Nashville, announced his commitment to UT Friday evening.
At 6’4″ 199 pounds, Lanier never averaged more than five points a game in three years with North Florida. However, he had a breakout season for them last year, averaging 19.7 points per game while shooting 44 percent from three and hitting nearly three and a half of them per game.
Simply put, he’s an elite scoring guard and highly efficient. He transfers to Tennessee Basketball, who landed him over Mark Pope’s Kentucky Wildcats and the BYU Cougars, with a focus on fine-tuning his game in his final year of eligibility to potentially prepare for the NBA Draft.
Lanier is the perfect type of player to commit to Barnes. Rather than one-and-done freshmen, who use college as a pit-stop for the pros and won’t buy into Barnes’ system, one-and-done veterans are aware they need to tweak their game. They commit based on that.
As a result, they will fully buy into Barnes’ system, which is why veteran players who are talented thrive in it. This is how Dalton Knecht could turn into an All-American, and more of those players will come in the age of NIL and the transfer portal.
However, Lanier isn’t the only transfer to fill that void for Tennessee Basketball this year, and it’s why the Vols will be even better than the team that just made the Elite Eight. They already have Knecht’s replacement in Darlinstone Dubar, and they added Felix Okpara and Igor Milicic Jr. down low.
Zakai Zeigler, Jahmai Mashack, Cameron Carr and Jordan Gainey are all back in the backcourt as well, and J.P. Estrella, who is developing, is back in the post. As a result, UT should easily go nine-deep next year, and they only went eight-deep this past year.
Not only can they go nine-deep, but they do it with three bigs instead of two, and they do it with seven potential sharpshooters instead of four. Meanwhile, Lanier gives them two go-to scoring options, along with Dubar, when the offense hits a drought. Last year, they only had one.
Simply put, with Lanier, Tennessee Basketball is clearly a better team, assuming everybody stays healthy. A national championship has to be in the picture now, and UT could be in for some even better things very soon. Kudos to UT for taking a major risk that paid off.
