By Chris Dortch
For some players, losing all of summer practice to a back injury that eventually required surgery to repair might have set them back and jeopardized their chances of winning a spot in their team’s rotation. Not so for Tennessee’s 6-foot-5 sixth-year wing Tyler Lundblade.
Well before players could officially report to school, Lundblade arrived in Knoxville last May and began to showcase the workout habits that Casey Alexander, who coached Lundblade for two seasons at Belmont, once called “freakish,” as in, not rarely seen. That impressed Vols coach Rick Barnes and his staff; they marveled at the quick release and deadly stroke of Lundblade, who led the nation in 3-point percentage (.481) in 2024-25 and in free-throw percentage (.934) last season, when he was chosen the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year.
“If anyone could miss the summer and come back ready to go, it’s Tyler Lundblade,” Barnes said. “Just because of the way he works individually—on his own. He’s the kind of guy you have to run out of the gym.”
Lundblade took part in only one summer practice, but that was enough to let the Tennessee staff know what sort of weapon Lundblade will be on a team loaded with more offensive talent than Barnes has coached during his 12 seasons in Knoxville.
“Having him on the floor changes everything,” Tennessee assistant Steve McClain said. “He occupies at least one and sometimes two defenders. You have to know where he is. You have to help off a pin-down screen. He ties up two to three people just being on the court, which creates opportunities for other guys. Defenses have to gravitate to him. He creates a whole different problem. You have to guard him. You cannot leave him. He’s also an elite passer and handles it better than people suspect.”
During a media opportunity before the official start of fall practice on Tuesday, Barnes said much the same thing.
“Our players have respected him from day one because of how hard he works,” Barnes said. “And in that one day of practice, they got a glimpse of it. He’s going to step out there, stretch the court and open it up for everybody.”
Lundblade wasn’t expecting to miss practice but eventually had to surrender to the pain in his back. He tried rehab but eventually opted for what he called “now or never” surgery, even though that meant the summer was lost.
“That’s not how you envision going to a new place,” Lundblade says. “But I got here early and was able to get some individual workouts under my belt. You want to be in the grind and in the mix with all the guys, but injury is a part of it. Fortunately, I’ll be back. I’ve been progressing nicely the last couple of weeks. And I was able to do stuff the whole summer—just with no contact. It wasn’t like I wasn’t able to work on my game.”
After leading Tennessee to the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight the last three seasons, Barnes, whose teams typically win with defense, rebounding, and toughness, realized if the Vols were going to go farther, they had to have more firepower than one or two players. In 2023-24, it was Dalton Knecht. A year later, Chaz Lanier was the go-to scorer. Last season Ja’Kobi Gillespie and Nate Ament shared the load.
After racking up one of the nation’s best transfer portal classes, Tennessee will have a lot more scoring options to choose from.
“We probably have five or six guys who can get you 20 points any night,” Lundblade said. “You could see it when everybody got here, in pickup games and that one practice I was a part of. We’ve got so many weapons. That’s what you need to go deep into March. You look at those two UConn teams that won titles; they probably had a different leading scorer nine times during those seasons.”
There’s no question Lundblade is going to score. Once he found a team that would let him play after walking on at SMU and TCU, earning a scholarship and eventually getting dropped from both rosters, Lundblade demonstrated that at Belmont. In his first season with the Bruins, he set a school record with 104 3-pointers and averaged 12.4 points. A year later, with defenses geared to stop him, Lundblade still managed to average 15.6 points, shoot 40.6% from 3 and make 115 3s after he learned to mix an off-the-bounce game with his deadly jumper.
He’ll get an opportunity to be a weapon and a facilitator for the Vols, who also signed, among others, Wake Forest transfer Juke Harris (21.4 ppg), Cal transfer Dai Dai Ames (16.9 ppg), Notre Dame transfer Jalen Haralson (16.2 ppg), and VCU transfer Terrence Hill Jr. (15.0 ppg).
“Coach and the whole staff do such a good job recruiting the guys who want to be here for the right reasons,” Lundblade said. “Some places I’ve been, egos flare up when things get hard. We’ve had none of that with this team. It’ll be more fun when I’m out there and able to compete with them every day.”
Though Lundblade was sidelined physically, he was able to keep his mental game sharp, noticing things during practice he thinks he might have missed if he were on the court. He’s also studied film, and after practice often talked X’s and O’s with Barnes. Occasionally, Lundblade even got to try his hand at coaching.
“One of the coolest things all summer was during practice, coach would be drawing up plays for whoever was on offense,” Lundblade said. “He let me come in and draw up stuff we did at Belmont. At a lot of places, you can’t do that. So it was super cool to be that involved.”