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Tennessee basketball season recap: Vols awards for 2019-2020 year

By Caleb Calhoun

FAYETTEVILLE, AR - FEBRUARY 26: Tennessee Volunteers huddle together before a game against the Arkansas Razorbacks at Bud Walton Arena on February 26, 2020 in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The Razorbacks defeated the Volunteers 86-69. (Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)
FAYETTEVILLE, AR - FEBRUARY 26: Tennessee Volunteers huddle together before a game against the Arkansas Razorbacks at Bud Walton Arena on February 26, 2020 in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The Razorbacks defeated the Volunteers 86-69. (Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images) /
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Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images
Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images /

In what was always deemed to be a transition year for Tennessee basketball, specific Volunteers still stood out. Here are our 2019-2020 player awards.

Well, there’s no postseason for Tennessee basketball this year, just like the rest of the nation. However, it’s hard to know what the Vols lost as a program. Conventional wisdom suggests they were just outside the NCAA Tournament bubble as the SEC Tournament was set to begin, but a solid run could have put them in the conversation.

Since they ended the season with a 17-14 record with a top 20 strength of schedule, though, it was clear that an NIT bid at the very least would be on the table for them. So this team, which was clearly in a transition year after a ton of veterans in 2018-2019 and with a ton of talent coming in for 2020-2021, still accomplished a few things.

Who was behind those accomplishments? With the losses of Grant Williams, Jordan Bone, Kyle Alexander and Admiral Schofield, Tennessee basketball had to turn to new talent to step up this year. That was even made worse when Lamonte Turner, the expected best player on this year’s team as a fifth-year senior, had season-ending shoulder surgery in December.

Simply having a winning record amidst all the transitions that happened this year along with the difficult strength of schedule is a major testament to Rick Barnes. It shows how well he has developed some of this talent, and that talent proved itself time and time again.

In this post, we’re going to look at that individual talent. We do awards every year, and while they mean more on teams that have successful postseason runs, this team is a bit unique. Even with the season shutting down early, specific kids deserve major shoutouts because of the heart and the character they showed.

There will be five awards to give out: sixth-man, most improved player, newcomer, defensive player and MVP. We’ll name the winner of each award and the runner-up, as some guys came really close. Let’s go ahead and give them out. These are our awards for Tennessee basketball’s 2019-2020 season, which was Rick Barnes’ fifth year on the job.

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