Tennessee basketball: Ranking Vols five newcomers by potential impact in 2019-2020

A three-star forward who committed to Tennessee basketball’s 2019 recruiting class, Drew Pember is a local product out of Bearden High School. To make things even more interesting, he has worked with former Vol Bobby Maze, playing for his AAU team. So Pember has a few local connections, which isn’t surprising since he’s from Knoxville.

Given the fact that four of the five key departures from last year’s team were post players and the fact that one of the guys waiting in the wings who redshirted and then transferred was also a post player, there is a clear opening for forwards right now. So Pember has a great chance to play for that reason alone.

However, at 6’9″ 207 pounds, he has to put on some weight. There’s just no way he’ll be able to shine the way Rick Barnes needs his inside players to shine at that size. As a result, guys like John Fulkerson and Zach Kent will be able to do what Barnes needs Pember to do, and they have more experience, so they’ll likely be better at it.

That’s not to say that Pember doesn’t have a great future on Rocky Top. This is probably a year for him to take a redshirt, though, despite the openings in the post game. There is just not much he can do with that size in the SEC, even if Barnes does go small this year.