Lew Evans spent last season at Utah State, but the graduate transfer will spend his final year of college basketball elsewhere. Tennessee is among the programs he's considering, and he's visiting Knoxville this weekend.ATLANTA - With six players signed already and a dearth of size on the roster, Tennessee's men's basketball program is being selective with its remaining scholarship for next season.
Coach Rick Barnes and the Volunteers hope to add a graduate transfer for at least two reasons. Landing an immediately eligible post player for one year would help next season's team while keeping open a second scholarship for the 2017 recruiting class.
"That's what we want," Barnes said before Wednesday's Big Orange Caravan stop at the College Football Hall of Fame. "We definitely want two scholarships going into next year. We want to be able to offer and sign a couple of inside players, post players. That would be the perfect situation, if we could end up finding a fifth-year guy."
One possibility is Lew Evans, who is transferring from Utah State but has not decided where he'll play his final college season. He's visiting Knoxville this weekend.
The 6-foot-9 forward averaged 8.4 points and 5.6 rebounds while starting 16 of 30 games as the Aggies went 16-15 last season. Evans shot just 41 percent from the field, but he made nearly 36 percent of his 73 3-point attempts and better than 71 percent of his free throws.
Evans spent the 2013-14 season at Tulsa - he averaged 5.3 points and 4.7 rebounds in 20.6 minutes per game and played in the NCAA tournament - after one season at Casper College in Wyoming.
Boston College, which Evans visited earlier this week, is Tennessee's primary competition at this point, though the transfer could take three more additional visits.
The Vols hope one transfer will take the spot vacated by another - Ray Kasongo, who decided earlier this offseason to leave the program after one season in which he averaged 5.5 minutes in 22 appearances.
"You go back and look, and we have almost an epidemic with guys leaving and transferring," Barnes said of the overall trend in college basketball. "Really it's something that, for our sport, we're going to have to take a good, long, hard look at. I still think it goes back to the recruiting process. There's where it all gets distorted. Kids come in expecting something, and if it doesn't work out the way they thought they were told or whatever, they end up leaving because there's somebody in their ear telling them, 'Hey, the grass is greener over here.' I do think that's a major problem.
"When you have fifth-year guys, they leave for various reasons, obviously. If you look around, there's a lot of programs the last couple of years that have benefited greatly from fifth-year guys."
The Vols hope to do the same.
Evans might not be the difference between a .500 record and making the NCAA tournament, but his presence certainly would boost a roster returning one player taller than 6-foot-5. There's also less risk involved in picking up what's essentially a one-year rental than taking a flyer on a high school player or even a junior college transfer this late in the recruiting cycle.
"As long as the rule's there, you can't blame a student for wanting to try to do something different if that's what they want to do," Barnes said. "It is a tough rule. It's really a tough situation for the school that's losing them, and obviously it's a benefit for anybody that's going to take a fifth-year player.
"Most everyone feels that person's going to come in and make an impact."
The Vols expect all six incoming signees - guards Jordan Bone and Kwe Parker, wings Jalen Johnson and Jordan Bowden and forwards John Fulkerson and Grant Williams - to arrive for the start of summer semester later this month.
They may not be the only new arrivals.
"The one thing that we knew we wanted that will help us more than anything is front-line help," Barnes said. "We'd like to get some versatility, a guy that can do some inside things and outside things, but we want somebody who can bring some toughness. More probably than anything is the chemistry part, too, and the experience, because we've got a young team.
"When you think about it, we have two upperclassmen in Robert Hubbs and Detrick Mostella. Everybody else, they're underclassmen. We need to add some experience. If we get the right guy, obviously it'd be almost like a home run for us."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.