Tennessee basketball: Five preseason storylines for 2019-2020 Vols

3. Will the NCAA grant Uros Plavsic an eligibility waiver?

This is a big deal. Having a seven-foot player on your team always gives you a huge advantage, and Tennessee basketball needs immediate help in the front-court after losing Grant Williams, Kyle Alexander, Admiral Schofield, and D.J. Burns and Derrick Walker to transfer.

As a result, whether or not the Vols get the eligibility waiver for Uros Plavsic, who transferred from the Arizona State Sun Devils, could determine what they do the whole season. You can’t ignore how important that is.

At 7’0″ 240 pounds, Plavsic immediately provides great size for the Vols. Coming from Serbia and playing high school basketball in Tennessee, you would have to think that he has developed a bit of finesse to his game. Sure, there are questions about his skills considering the fact he’s a redshirt freshman who never played for ASU. So he has no college basketball experience.

But in college ball, the size alone can be a big deal. So if Plavsic gets the eligibility waiver, the Vols immediately have a seven-footer, a veteran scoring guard, a veteran combo guard, and a five-star combo guard to make up their back-court. All of a sudden, they could have a dangerous team. But Plavsic not getting a waiver leaves them severely limited.

Given all the losses they have suffered, this question will linger with them until they get an answer, and it will dictate how everything else goes in the offseason. It also leads to our next preseason storyline.