Tennessee Basketball: Volunteers ranked way too high in the AP Preseason top-25 poll

The AP Top 25 preseason poll was released on Monday morning with just about three weeks left until the 2024-2025 college basketball season tips off. 

At the top, the poll features Kansas at No. 1, Alabama at No. 2 and the defending back-to-back national champions, UConn, at No. 3. 

Nine SEC teams are occupying a spot in the rankings, including the Tennessee Volunteers, who come in at No. 12 thanks to four transfers and returning guys like Zakai Zeigler, Jahmai Mashack, Jordan Gainey, Cade Phillips, J.P. Estrella, Grant Hurt, and Cameron Carr. 

Seeing Tennessee at No. 12 is too good of a ranking right off the bat, as the Vols will be left to fend without Dalton Knecht, a Northern Colorado transfer who averaged 21.7 points, 4.9 rebounds, and 1.8 assists through 36 games played with the Vols last season. Knecht surpassed what was most expected, earning a spot on the first-team All-American list and first-team All-SEC list while winning the SEC Player of the Year Award and the SEC Newcomer of the Year award. Without Knecht, who you can always count on for a bucket, the Vols strongly need to find their scorer. 

While the return of Zeigler, who averaged 11.8 points and 6.1 assists, and Mashack, who averaged 4.5 points and 3.1 rebounds will certainly help, the Vols will likely turn to their four incoming transfers, Chaz Lanier, Igor Milicic Jr., Felix Okpara and Darlinstone Dubar. 

Lanier, a four-star North Florida transfer averaged 19.7 points, 4.8 rebounds and 1.8 assists while earning a spot on the ASUN First-team all conference list last season. The word in Rocky Top is that Lanier will/could be the next Knecht in terms of a mid-major transfer having a big impact, but I don’t see the same in Lanier that I see in Knecht.

“It’s college, players come and go all the time, Tennessee will be fine,” some may think, and while that could be the case, I don’t see Tennessee having anywhere close to the firepower that it had last year, even with the transfers coming in this year, and even with the firepower it had a season ago, Tennessee still failed to make the Final Four. 

With Knecht's farewell, Vols head coach Rick Barnes was able to reel in some solid talent through the transfer portal. With those additions, the Vols certainly have the potential to be a solid team, but without Knecht, I don’t see them deserving a top-12 spot this early on.