On Wednesday, Rick Barnes picked up Notre Dame transfer Jalen Haralson, a 6-foot-7 playmaking wing. Then, a day later, he added 6-foot-9 small forward Christopher Washington Jr. to his 2026 recruiting class.
If any other program pursuing Juke Harris, the top playmaking wing in the country, made those moves, it could be understood as an insurance policy, if not an outright pivot. But Tennessee, after making three straight Elite Eights, is all-in to finally break through that ceiling and reach its first Final Four.
The Vols are seen as the leader for Harris, the 6-foot-7 transfer from Wake Forest, with Michigan and UNC still in hot pursuit. And if the fanbases in Ann Arbor and Chapel Hill think they see their opening, they’re sorely mistaken.
Tennessee is still all-in on Juke Harris after Jalen Haralson and Christopher Washington Jr. pickups
Positional is the name of the game in college basketball, and Barnes knows it as well as anyone. For all of his team’s flaws last year, the Vols were big, and with the best offensive rebounding rate in the country, they bullied their way to the Regional Final as a six-seed.
While Dai Dai Ames is undersized at 6-foot-2, he might be the only small guard on the team. Previous portal pickups Tyler Lundblade and Miles Rubin are 6-foot-5 and 6-foot-10, respectively. So, if you’re going to supersize, as Michigan did in its national title run, you need big playmakers, and quite a few of them. Haralson can provide some of that, but Harris is the ideal version and has enough shooting to fit in the backcourt next to Ames and other portal target Terrence Hill Jr., who is a 40 percent three-point shooter at 6-foot-3.
You can never have enough playmaking wings
A McDonald’s All-American in the 2025 class, the rosiest projections of Haralson’s game saw a primary offensive initiator at 6-foot-7, 220 pounds with ideal guard skills. The reality, even in a freshman season that saw him average 16.2 points with 2.6 assists a game, was more of a playmaking big wing whose major swing skill is the three-point shot.
Haralson’s handle isn’t quite tight enough to run the offense for large portions of the game, and while he sees the floor well as a passer, he averaged more turnovers than assists. Still, he can attack the defense off a backside swing, using long strides to knife to the cup, and has enough playmaking chops to make real decisions.
His best skill might be as a cutter. He just knows how to fill voids in the defense and play off his teammates' drives to get easy buckets. That’s a big reason nearly 80 percent of his shots came in the paint. The other reason is his shot. Frankly, it just isn’t there yet, but he can develop some respectable range he’ll be a terrifying force.
Washington is another supreme athlete who will help turn Tennessee into a defensive juggernaut. He’ll add value on the boards, speed in transition, and defensive versatility to a team clearly looking to dominate the interior on both ends of the floor. However, like Haralson, he won’t add much shooting. Juke Harris would.
Michigan’s three-big lineups worked because Yaxel Lendeborg turned himself into a near 40 percent three-point shooter off the catch and the bounce. Harris is already there, so while he has a similar build to Haralson and Washington, and ostensibly plays the same position, he’ll fill an entirely different role for a team loading up to make a national title run.
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