Rick Barnes comments on Nate Ament’s lingering injury, availability vs. Virginia
By Ethan Stone
Published:
Nate Ament is not 100% healthy, and he won’t be before the end of the 2025-26 college basketball season.
The former 5-star forward suffered a high ankle sprain at the end of the regular season and had to miss some time for the Volunteers as a result. Head coach Rick Barnes frequently updated media on Ament’s status during this time, and the answer was always similar. Something around the lines of this: Nate isn’t 100%, but he refuses to miss extended time on the court.
On Saturday, the story was much of the same.
“It’s a problem,” Barnes said of Ament’s injury on Saturday. “Nate is one of the toughest kids I have ever coached. We played every minute ever since he hurt his ankle in the Alabama game and got his knee rolled up on. Doctors knew we had to get him as healthy as we possibly could, but when you have a sprain the nature that he has, it won’t be healthy until he gets time off at the end of the year.”
Barnes continued: “A lot of guys this time of year have to play with those type things, and in terms of how we’re going to play, he’ll play the way he plays. Like last night, we could tell he was struggling with it. That’s why we didn’t put him back in the game. Thankful that we had the lead that we had, but we did have some other guys that really stepped in and played well.”
Barnes is right. The Vols were able to skirt past Miami University with relative ease on Friday thanks to a herculean effort from Ja’Kobi Gillespie, who dropped 29 points and 9 assists in a one-sided win. But while his efforts were sufficient against the RedHawks, Gillespie is unlikely to be able to carry the Vols offense by himself against Virginia.
“We need Nate,” Barnes concluded. “He knows it, but he will give us everything that he can, and that’s really all I can say about it. If it’s up to him, he would play every minute if he could. We’ll see game time.”
The Vols and Cavaliers are set to face off at 6:10 p.m. ET on Sunday. The game is set to air on TNT. Here’s a look at the latest odds to win, per Kalshi:
Ethan Stone is a Tennessee graduate and loves all things college football and college basketball. Firm believer in fouling while up 3.
