Rick Barnes provides injury updates for Nate Ament, Amari Evans
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Rick Barnes spoke to the media on Tuesday morning before his Tennessee team practiced and traveled to Nashville for this week’s SEC Tournament.
There were many subjects to discuss as the Volunteers get set to try to improve their NCAA Tournament seeding, and one of them was the statuses of Tennessee’s walking wounded. Barnes shed some light on freshman forward Nate Ament, freshman guard Amari Evans and freshman point guard Troy Henderson.
Ament was originally injured on Feb. 28 during a home loss to Alabama, when his right knee bent in awkward fashion after Ament got tangled in a scrum of players during the first half. He sat out Tennessee’s final 2 regular-season games last week, and Barnes shed some light on the status of the Volunteers’ 2nd-leading scorer and leading rebounder.
“He’s OK. He did some more. He did some things with Chad (Newman) the last couple days, and I think he’ll see a little bit more (Tuesday),” Barnes said. “But still, we’ll just see. He has been doing more with Chad running and G (strength coach Garrett Medenwald), those type things. He’ll probably push a little bit more (Tuesday) and see how he responds from it.”
Meanwhile, Evans injured his ankle during last Saturday’s home loss to Vanderbilt.
“Yeah. He’s nursing with it. It’s still sore, which this time of year, I’m not sure guys that have those kind of injuries — Nate, him — if they ever truly get back to 100%,” Barnes said. “It’s what they can tolerate and what we can do with it. But I know, again, with both of those guys, they’re doing everything they can to take care of their business with that.”
Barnes said that he didn’t think Henderson would practice on Tuesday because of a stinger. According to Barnes, no matter what happens now at the end of the season with Henderson, he’ll be forced to have surgery in the offseason.
Tennessee is the No. 5 seed at the SEC Tournament and will open play on Thursday afternoon against the winner of Wednesday’s matchup between 12th seed Auburn and 13th seed Mississippi State.
Here are Kalshi’s current odds for teams to reach the Sweet 16, with Tennessee being listed as having a 47% chance right now:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
