Tennessee Volunteers Basketball

The University of Tennessee has reportedly tabbed Kellie Harper as the school's next head women's basketball coach.

ESPN's Chris Low (h/t Mechelle Voepel) confirmed a report from Fox News Knoxville on Monday that Tennessee plans to hire Harper after firing Holly Warlick last month.

Harper led Missouri State to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA women's tournament this season and previously won three national championships as a player at Tennessee in 1996, 1997 and 1998.

The 41-year-old Harper has been a collegiate head coach since getting hired by Western Carolina in 2004. She led the team to two NCAA tournament appearances and two NIT berths in five seasons before replacing legendary coach Kay Yow at NC State in 2009.

During her four seasons at NC State, Harper reached the NCAA tournament only one time and had just two winning seasons.

Following her firing in 2013, Harper was hired by Missouri State. In six seasons at the school, Harper took the Lady Bears to the NCAA tournament twice and the NIT on three occasions. She helped Missouri State finish 25-10 in 2018-19 with wins over No. 6 DePaul and No. 3 Iowa State in the NCAA tournament as a No. 11 seed before falling to second-seeded Stanford in the Sweet 16.

During her 15-year head coaching career, Harper owns a 285-208 record with five trips to the NCAA tournament.

Tennessee was once the most dominant program in women's college basketball, but the Lady Vols have not won a national title since 2008. Overall, Tennessee has eight national championships and 18 Final Four appearances to its credit.

Only UConn (11) has more all-time national titles than Tennessee.

The Lady Vols have been on the decline since the retirement of the late Pat Summit in 2012. Warlick took over as Tennessee's head coach in 2012, and while she led the Lady Vols to the NCAA tournament in each of her seven seasons at the helm, they never made it past the Elite Eight.

After losing in the second round of the tournament in both 2017 and 2018, Tennessee was ousted in the first round in 2019 by UCLA. The Lady Vols went just 19-13 on the season, marking the first time they didn't win at least 20 games in a season since 1975-76.

As a point guard under her maiden name of Kellie Jolly, Harper played under Summit and Warlick, who was Summit's head assistant.

Rick Barnes will remain with the Tennessee Volunteers and remove himself from consideration for the UCLA Bruins' head coach vacancy, according to ESPN.com's Chris Low. 

Low reported Monday that UCLA had approached Barnes and discussed a possible deal that would be worth $5 million per year. However, Tennessee provided Barnes with an amended contract that enticed him to stay in Knoxville.

The Volunteers finished this year with a 31-6 record and reached the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2014. Tennessee is likely to take a step backward in 2019-20, though. Admiral Schofield is graduating, and Jordan Bone already declared for the 2019 draft.

With Barnes at the helm, the Vols can feel confident the program is still headed in the right direction.

On the other side, this is yet another setback for the Bruins, who have struck out on every one of their preferred targets so far.

Have the Bruins considered using a job service like Glassdoor, Monster, Indeed or LinkedIn to find their next head coach? Now with Rick Barnes no longer in the mix, that’s gotta be the next move for UCLA.

— Bryan Kalbrosky (@BryanKalbrosky) April 9, 2019

The UCLA coaching search is officially worse than the plot of The Godfather: Part III and that's bad territory to be in.

— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) April 9, 2019

So far, UCLA has:

1) Offered John Calipari a "monster" offer... that was less than he was already making
2) Refused to pay Jamie Dixon's buyout
3) Got Rick Barnes a pay raise at Tennessee

This is officially the worst coaching search of my lifetime. There isnt a close second

— Aaron Torres (@Aaron_Torres) April 9, 2019

The Athletic's Seth Davis reported the school would pursue Cincinnati Bearcats head coach Mick Cronin if Barnes proved to be a non-starter.

Regardless of the money involved, it says a lot about where UCLA is at the moment that Barnes would view Tennessee as the preferred destination. Historically speaking, UCLA is one of the most successful programs in college basketball and has the added advantage of playing in one of the biggest media markets in the United States.

Despite that, Barnes—like John Calipari and Jamie Dixon—is staying put.

The Bruins are providing a big reason why having a reasonable idea of potential successors is a good idea when firing a head coach.

Steve Alford was out on New Year's Eve, and Murry Bartow took over as the interim replacement. At the time, UCLA must have thought its coaching search would come together rather quickly at the end of the season.

Instead, the search is devolving into a farce, with each mishap further damaging perception of the Bruins.

After wrapping up a successful junior year at Tennessee, Jordan Bone is ready to challenge himself against professional competition. 

Per 247Sports' Evan Daniels, Bone announced he will enter the 2019 NBA draft. 

"I feel like over these past three years that I have put myself in a good position to test the waters," Bone said. "I'm a junior now so they have the rule where you can test the waters and come back if need be but honestly I feel like I have proven myself to be one of the better point guards in the country."

Bone added "there is always a chance" he could return to the Volunteers, but he doesn't see it happening unless something drastic changes during the predraft process. 

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime chance and not many people can say that they're in the position," he said. "I'm extremely blessed to be in my position, but if the opportunity is there to take, then I'm going to take it."

Per 247Sports' Jordan James, national college basketball analyst Jerry Meyer believes Bone is being underrated as an NBA prospect. 

"I think Jordan is a first-round pick," Meyer said. "In my opinion I think he's that talented. I think he's a guy that you can throw out there, and no one's going to stop Russell Westbrook let's say, but [Bone] has the athleticism, the size, the physicality to hang with a guy like [Westbrook]."

B/R's Jonathan Wasserman didn't include Bone on among the top 75 draft-eligible prospects on his most recent big board.

The 2018-19 season was Bone's best at Tennessee. He averaged a career-high 13.5 points and 5.8 assists per game while shooting 46.5 percent from the field to help the Vols advance to the Sweet 16. 

Tennessee is trending upward. Looking into the future, the Rick Barnes-led program should be consistently competing with Kentucky for a top position in the SEC and a fixture in the AP Top 25 poll.

Inconsistency, however, accompanies that hopeful rise right now. The peaks are spectacular, but the valleys are annoyingly low.

And the 2018-19 squad is exemplifying that complex position.

Tennessee began the campaign sixth in the AP poll, the highest preseason ranking in program history. As the calendar has flipped to March, the Vols have backed up that billing with a 26-3 record and have never left the Top 10 all season.

Grant Williams, the reigning SEC Player of the Year, has been the superstar everyone expected. He should be an All-American this year. Led by Admiral Schofield, four other players average double figures.

In nonconference action, Tennessee toppled Louisville and handed Gonzaga one of its two losses. Including the late-January clash with West Virginia, the Vols cruised through that portion of the schedule. They finished 12-1 outside of SEC play with 10 victories of 13-plus points, with the only loss coming to Kansas in overtime in November.

That tremendous start ushered in a program-record 19-game winning streak, crushing the old mark of 15 and providing a humorous moment from Barnes after victory No. 16.

Rick Barnes on Tennessee’s 16-game winning streak, which sets a new school record: “Is that a record?”

— @GrantRamey (@GrantRamey) February 3, 2019

The byproduct was four straight weeks at No. 1 in the AP poll, which is especially notable because the Vols previously stood atop the AP just once ever—in the 2007-08 season.

Along the way, though, a soft schedule was reason to temper praise. After knocking off Gonzaga on Dec. 9, Tennessee didn't play another Top 25 opponent for more than two months.

That's not entirely in the Vols' control, but it's what happened. While the dominance showed during that stretch was impressive, many fans and analysts took a wait-and-see approach.

Objectively, this is one of Tennessee's best teams. Subjectively, it's in the conversation as the standard in team history. Yet nobody is suggesting the Vols are a perfect group because the flaws are apparent―and have recently started to show.

The chief issues are a lack of high-volume perimeter threats and shaky defensive rebounding, ranking 328th in three-point attempt rate and in the bottom 25 percent of defensive efficiency on the glass. That combination has already proved fatal when the competition level has risen, and it's only going to get higher.

Plus, in the latest AP poll, the only schools in the Top 15―which contains a strong majority of the championship betting favorites, per Vegas Insider―with a lower strength of schedule than Tennessee are Houston and Virginia Tech.

So, given the weaknesses and a shortage of tests, it wasn't a surprise when Kentucky earned a 17-point triumph in mid-February. Following an unimpressive offensive day at Vanderbilt, Tennessee lost to a short-handed LSU in overtime and clipped Ole Miss thanks to a last-minute recovery.

The biggest concerns were painfully evident. And with a rematch against Kentucky looming, the timing couldn't have been worse.

Naturally, the Vols demolished Kentucky.

Because of that win, Barnes' team is headed for a top-two seed in the SEC tournament. If LSU takes the regular-season crown, the Vols could encounter both Kentucky and LSU. The neutral-site matchups would offer critical insights into their NCAA upside.

At their best, they can compete with anyone. Wins over Louisville, Gonzaga (albeit slightly short-handed), a mostly healthy Kansas and Kentucky show that. That recent rout of Kentucky sure is encouraging after a disappointing two-week stretch, too.

But the let downs cannot be ignored, either.

Tennessee's superb talent can struggle to atone for tepid perimeter output. And if the Vols are inefficient on the boards, it's the perfect recipe for a close margin. To this point, their only stretches of tight finishes happened in December and February―and the more recent results weren't consistently encouraging.

The future in Knoxville is tremendously bright. Right now, though, it means wondering which Tennessee team shows up when the competition is toughest.

            

All recruiting information via 247Sports. All statistics courtesy of KenPom or Sports-Reference.com, unless otherwise noted. Follow Bleacher Report writer David Kenyon on Twitter @Kenyon19_BR.

Josiah James, one of the top-ranked guards in the 2019 college basketball recruiting class, announced Wednesday that he will play for the Tennessee Volunteers.

Evan Daniels of 247Sports reported the update and noted James selected the Vols over the Clemson Tigers and Duke Blue Devils.

The Porter-Gaud School standout is a 5-star prospect and the No. 14 overall player in next year's incoming class, per 247Sports. He's also listed as the third-best combo guard and the top recruit from South Carolina.

James explained his choice in a first-person essay for the Moultrie News and called the process "one of the hardest things I've done."

"I can build a legacy of my own there [with the Vols,]" James wrote. "Not that Tennessee hasn't had great players in the past because they have and they still do right now. But taking a little bit different route than what people probably expected was more for me."

He added: "It really isn't anything against Duke or Clemson. They both were great. Really great. But people always said when you know, you'll know. And I knew. I already knew in my heart so I didn't think it was fair to waste anybody's time. That wouldn't be a cool move on my part."

James also wrote that he's looking forward to facing off with Aaron Nesmith, a Porter-Gaud teammate who joined the Vanderbilt Commodores as part of their 2018 class, in the SEC.

It's a massive addition for Rick Barnes, who's made steady progress over three years at Tennessee, highlighted by a 26-9 record and an NCAA tournament berth last season.

James is the type of prospect who should be ready to make an immediate impact next year. It wouldn't be a surprise to see him step right into the starting lineup with Admiral Schofield, the team's second-leading scorer during the 2017-18 season, set to graduate after the upcoming campaign.

Head coach Rick Barnes led the Tennessee Volunteers men's basketball team to an SEC regular-season crown and NCAA tournament appearance last season and was rewarded accordingly Thursday.

According to the Associated Press (h/t Sports Illustrated), athletic director Phillip Fulmer announced Barnes received a contract extension through the 2023-24 campaign. The three-year extension brings his average annual salary up from $2.25 million to $3.5 million.

Barnes has been a head coach since the 1987-88 season at a number of schools. He has been on the sidelines for George Mason, Providence, Clemson, Texas and Tennessee and holds a 661-358 overall record.

Tennessee hired him prior to the 2015-16 campaign after he parted ways with the Longhorns, and he has demonstrated consistent improvement every year. The Volunteers were 15-19 in his first season, improved to 16-16 in his second and then exploded with a 26-9 mark and tied Auburn for the SEC's regular-season crown in 2017-18.

The Volunteers are poised to continue their ascension in 2018-19, and Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com ranked them No. 4 in his early Top 25 and pointed to the return of a number of players, including reigning SEC Player of the Year Grant Williams.

Barnes also has the No. 25 recruiting class for the 2019 cycle on 247Sports and looks to have the program heading in the right direction.

He now has three more years to work with following this extension.

The Tennessee Volunteers have proved the doubters wrong all season long—and they look forward to continuing to do so in March Madness.

As people fill out their brackets ahead of the NCAA tournament, most players want fans to believe in their teams and pick them to make a deep run. Not the Volunteers. They enjoy playing with a chip on their shoulder.

Don't pick us.pic.twitter.com/cGmCl55gTS

— Tennessee Basketball (@Vol_Hoops) March 14, 2018

Tennessee earned a No. 3 seed in the Big Dance by going 25-8 and winning a share of the SEC regular-season title. Rick Barnes won SEC Coach of the Year, sophomore Grant Williams was named SEC Player of the Year and Admiral Schofield was named second-team All-SEC. There are plenty of reasons to jump on the bandwagon and pick the Volunteers to make some noise in the tournament.

Don't say the Vols didn't warn you.

James Daniel, who led the NCAA in scoring during the 2015-16 season, will transfer from Howard to Tennessee as a graduate student.

"It came down to the relationship with coach [Rick] Barnes, the rest of the staff and the environment," Daniel told ESPN.com's Jeff Goodman. "I think that Tennessee is ready to win right now."

Daniel averaged 27.1 points and 2.8 assists during the 2015-16 campaign. He was limited to two games last season due to an ankle injury.

Ohio State, Michigan and DePaul were also among his final choices. Daniel said his relationship with Barnes helped push the Vols over the edge.

"I feel that I can help Tennessee as a leader," Daniel said. "And Coach Barnes said he wants me to come in and make basketball plays. Be myself and attack."

Tennessee went 16-16 in 2016-17, Barnes' second season in Knoxville after a 17-year run at Texas. The Vols are 14-22 in SEC play under Barnes and have struggled in shot creation. Ken Pomeroy's adjusted offensive efficiency ranked Tennessee 73rd in the country last year, and the team tied for 145th nationally in assists per game.

The Vols lost guard Robert Hubbs III to graduation and dismissed Detrick Mostella midseason in 2016-17, leaving them with a hole in the backcourt.

Family, friends and former players honored and celebrated former Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt on Thursday night in Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville, Tennessee.   

Summitt died at 64 years old on June 28. She had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease in 2011.

The NCAA shared photos from inside the arena for Thursday's ceremony:

Thousands show up to celebrate the life of the legendary Pat Summitt. pic.twitter.com/BTk0NAziGv

— NCAA (@NCAA) July 14, 2016

Summitt was one of the greatest college basketball coaches in history. In her 38 years with Tennessee, the Lady Vols won 1,098 games and eight national championships. Candace Parker, Tamika Catchings, Chamique Holdsclaw, Kara Lawson and Nikki McCray were among the stars who suited up for Summitt.

WBIR Channel 10 shared a picture of the former players who assembled in Knoxville:

Here's a photo of the Lady Vols attending tonight's Pat Summitt Celebration of Life https://t.co/NTnYRQa4Ec pic.twitter.com/0eOE0Lgc2p

— WBIR Channel 10 (@wbir) July 14, 2016

The Lady Vols' Twitter account provided comments from Catchings, the No. 4 scorer and No. 3 rebounder in school history, and Mickie DeMoss, who spent years as an assistant with Summitt:

Tamika Catchings on her head coach and mentor, #PatSummitt: pic.twitter.com/66Fm2NqAZB

— Lady Vols Basketball (@LadyVol_Hoops) July 15, 2016

#PatSummitt pic.twitter.com/ExKqOabzeP

— Lady Vols Basketball (@LadyVol_Hoops) July 15, 2016

When Tennessee was at its peak in the 1990s, Summitt was synonymous with women's college basketball, and the Lady Vols' rivalry with the Connecticut Huskies was legendary. Huskies head coach Geno Auriemma was on hand to pay his respects to Summitt, per espnW's Mechelle Voepel.

Summitt gained a reputation for her no-nonsense demeanor. She cut an intimidating figure on the sideline.

Her son Tyler offered a glimpse of Summitt at home, per ESPN The Magazine's Ryan McGee and WATE-TV's Jillian Mahen:

Tyler Summitt: #PatSummitt was a mom first. Cooked meals, went to soccer games, big heart for others...much more than just The Stare.

— Ryan McGee (@ESPNMcGee) July 14, 2016

The heart for others...She would sacrifice, no matter where she was, she would sacrifice for others-Tyler Summitt #PatSummitt

— Jillian Mahen (@Jillian_Mahen) July 14, 2016

"It is a rarity to attend a celebration of life service for someone who literally changed history," said Peyton Manning, per ESPN Women's Hoops' Twitter feed. "That's what we're doing. Every Tennessee football player, including me, would have been proud to have been coached by [Summitt]."

The family of former Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt released a statement Sunday confirming recent reports she is going through a "difficult" time as her Alzheimer's disease has advanced.

"On behalf of Pat Summitt's family, we acknowledge the past few days have been difficult for Pat as her early onset dementia, 'Alzheimer's Type,' progresses," the statement read. "She is surrounded by those who mean the most to her and during this time, we ask for prayers for Pat and her family and friends, as well as your utmost respect and privacy. Thank you."

The Knoxville News Sentinel's Dan Fleser previously reported Summitt's loved ones were "preparing for the worst."

On Monday, Josh Ward of WNML passed along comments made by Summitt's pastor, Chris Stephens, to NewsTalk 98.7's Hallerin Hilton Hill. Stephens said the family is no longer taking visitors and that "the end is 'very imminent.'"

The 64-year-old was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2011. She retired from coaching following the 2011-12 season and has the title of head coach emeritus in Knoxville. Tennessee won eight national championships and made 18 Final Four appearances during her tenure.

Her health has steadily declined since her diagnosis. While she completed a full season as a coach following the diagnosis, longtime Lady Vols announcer Mickey Dearstone gave insight into her worsened state in a March interview with CBSSports.com's Dennis Dodd.

"I'm not sure that she knows who I am unless I tell her," Dearstone said. "People that were really close to her, it's really sunk in."

The average life expectancy of someone diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease is eight to 10 years, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Follow Tyler Conway (@jtylerconway) on Twitter.