Tennessee trending for five-star power forward Brandon Huntley-Hatfield

It’s been a busy offseason for the Tennessee basketball program with two coaches gone, two new coaches in place and a slew of roster plus and minuses. There’s some anxiety pulsing through the fanbase partly because those minuses outweigh the pluses, and it’s hard to visualize what the team will look like next season.

Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, a 6-foot-9 power forward and the No. 1 player at his position for the 2022 class, has already been penciled as many fans’ primarily solution to the Vols’ precarious post-depth position even though he’s 1) a class of ‘22 player and as-is wouldn’t step foot onto any college campus until after next season and 2) not publicly committed anywhere.

Still — he’s from Clarksville and has consistently mentioned the Vols as one of his favorites. And, reclassification has sorta become a thing lately, so with Tennessee’s lack of an inside presence, there’s been lots of chatter that Huntley-Hatfield ends up joining UT’s 2021 signing class.

I’ve not been a big fan of this theory — it’s just seemed too farfetched for me to really get behind — but today, 247 hoops’ writer Travis Branham put in a crystal ball prediction on BHH to Tennessee. He’s the second 247 analyst to make the pick, joining long-time college basketball writer Jerry Meyer.

247 puts a confidence rating along with the selections so the people who make the pick can let us know how strongly he or she feels about each prediction. Branham listed today’s BHH pick at a nine (the scale naturally runs 1 - 10). He also indicated that he made the switch because of some information he apparently obtained recently with a “via scoop,” hyperlink.