{"id":307267,"date":"2025-10-16T05:32:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T05:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/307267\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T05:32:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T05:32:17","slug":"both-tennessee-basketball-teams-enter-season-with-high-expectations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/307267\/","title":{"rendered":"Both Tennessee basketball teams enter season with high expectations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Knoxville, TN (WCYB) &#8211; There are reasons to be excited for both University of Tennessee basketball teams during the 2025-26 season.<\/p>\n<p>The Lady Vols will begin the year ranked eighth in the nation. The men&#8217;s team will start as number 18.<\/p>\n<p>Kim Caldwell returns a large part of last year&#8217;s production. She also assembled elite groups of signees from the transfer portal and high school. Last season&#8217;s success has impacted recruiting. &#8220;It&#8217;s been easier to sell because they watch the game,&#8221; said Caldwell. &#8220;You can show clips of people in Tennessee uniforms and how they&#8217;d fit in.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Rick Barnes had to reload with players who were not key contributors on last season&#8217;s Elite 8 team and people whom were not even in the program. One of Barnes&#8217; new players is former Greeneville Greene Devil, Ja&#8217;Kobi Gillespie. &#8220;We&#8217;re lucky to have him, we&#8217;re blessed to have him,&#8221; said Barnes. &#8220;Cause he&#8217;s better than I thought.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Knoxville, TN (WCYB) &#8211; There are reasons to be excited for both University of Tennessee basketball teams during&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":307268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,65076,155526,22825,155524,1317,1337,1338,155527,34569,155525,62,34570,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-307267","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-jakobi-gillespie","10":"tag-kim-caldwell","11":"tag-lady-vols","12":"tag-mens-team","13":"tag-ncaa","14":"tag-ncaa-basketball","15":"tag-ncaabasketball","16":"tag-recruiting-success","17":"tag-rick-barnes","18":"tag-season-expectations","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-tennessee-basketball","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115382213088359987","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}