KNOXVILLE – Tennessee has spent weeks evolving as a team while trying to get players comfortable in new roles on the basketball court.
Back to the drawing board.
Moments after the 21st-ranked Volunteers beat Jacksonville State 75-53 Saturday afternoon at Thompson-Boling Arena, improving to 8-3 this season and giving coach Rick Barnes the 700th victory of his career, senior guard Lamonte Turner announced he will have season-ending surgery to repair what he called “thoracic outlet syndrome” in his left (nonshooting) shoulder.
Already lacking depth, Tennessee will go into its final nonconference game of 2019, next Saturday at home against Wisconsin, with just eight scholarship players – and half of them are freshmen. The Vols have struggled to acclimate, with those freshmen getting their first taste of Division I basketball and the players who returned from last season’s 31-win team taking on much bigger roles than before.
For Turner, it was a different struggle. The 6-foot-2, 187-pounder from Floerence, Alabama, who finished his Tennessee career with 1,086 points and 347 assists after an eight-point, 11-assist performance against the Gamecocks (4-8), has been dealing with the injured shoulder for a couple of seasons. Multiple procedures failed to take him back to being the player he was before, with Turner shooting 31% from the field, 23% from 3-point range and 75% from the foul line this season, all career lows.