Tyler Lundblade isn’t offering a hard date for his return, but Tennessee’s guard sounds confident he won’t be out much longer.
The Vols transfer, who has been working back from a back injury that interrupted his summer, said Tuesday that he believes he “should be back pretty soon.” He stopped short of promising a specific timeline, but the tone was upbeat after months of rehab and limited court work.
“In a perfect world, I wouldn't miss any games,” Lundblade said. “But I'm also not going to sit here and give you a hard deadline of when I'll be back. But the way things are going, I feel really good about where I'm at, and should be back ready to roll.”
Lundblade had surgery in August after an oral steroid and injection failed to solve the issue that followed him after his transfer from Belmont earlier this year. He described the procedure as a practical fix rather than anything major.
“(It was) either surgery now or never, and luckily it was a pretty non-invasive 45-minute cleanup surgery, and it's helped a lot,” Lundblade said. “I feel really good, and I'm really happy that that's the route we went down.”
His summer with Tennessee was heavily limited. He missed nearly all of the team’s two-month practice period because of the injury and couldn’t get into much, if any, five-on-five work. Even so, he was able to stay involved at times by working off to the side with strength coach Garrett Medenwald.
“I was able to do stuff the whole summer,” Lundblade said. “No contact or anything, but I was able to still work on my game and get better. So even though I was kind of dealing with an injury for a while, it wasn't like I was just completely sidelined doing nothing, which helps now on this side of rehab, being able to come back quicker.”
Right now, much of his day is spent rehabbing with John Dean, Tennessee’s Director or Rehabilitation. He said he only has a few more underwater treadmill sessions left before moving to the Anti-Gravity Treadmill and eventually running on the ground again. For now, he can still “form shoot and do ball handling, just no heavy pounding yet.”
The transition to Tennessee has been a little unusual, and Lundblade didn’t hide that.
He committed to the Vols on April 1, just days after his official visit. Tennessee’s staff, including Rick Barnes, picked up Lundblade and his parents from the airport for that visit less than 24 hours after the Vols lost to Michigan in the Elite Eight. Tennessee was the only school he visited in the portal.
“It’s been a challenge,” Lundblade said about moving over from Belmont. “It's not how you envision going to a new place, but I mean, fortunately, like Coach (Barnes) alluded to, I got here a little bit early, so I was able to get some work in under my belt.
“But yeah, it's definitely been frustrating. Nobody wants to be hurt, especially coming into a new place in my last year.
You want to be in the grind and in the mix in the summer with all the guys, but injuries are part of it. Thankfully it's nothing major.
I'll be back, so I'm looking forward to kind of being on the tail end of that right now.”
Barnes said Lundblade has stayed engaged despite the setback, and Tennessee plans to be careful with him.
“He seems to be optimistic about it,” Barnes said. “Being a fifth-year guy and he's in practice, he really stays highly engaged in practice. He knows what's going on, but we'll err on the cautious side of it there because obviously he's going to bring a different weapon to what we do.”
Lundblade arrives with a résumé built around elite shooting. Last season at Belmont, he led the nation in free-throw percentage at 93.41, ranked sixth in three-pointers per game at 3.59 and ninth in three-pointers made with 115, earning Mountain Valley Conference Player of the Year honors after helping the Bruins win the regular-season title. He averaged 15.9 points, 2.7 rebounds and 1.8 assists in 33 starts.
The Dallas native had already led the country in three-point percentage two seasons earlier, shooting 48.1% in his first year at Belmont. Before that, he had scored just eight points in 52 minutes across his first three college seasons, then broke out with a 12.4-point average in the 2024-25 season.
According to Tennessee basketball SID Alex Schwartz, Lundblade is the only player in DI men's basketball history to lead the country in both free-throw percentage (2025-26) and three-point percentage (2024-25) during his career.
Lundblade’s path has included stops at SMU, TCU and Belmont. He redshirted at SMU in 2021-22, then transferred to TCU for two seasons before moving to Belmont. He also received a medical redshirt during one of his seasons at TCU.
Before college, he was a McDonald’s All-American nominee in 2021 and averaged 10.6 points, 2.9 rebounds and 1.2 assists on 45% shooting as a senior at Greensboro Day School in North Carolina. He also averaged 22.7 points over three seasons at Grapevine Faith Christian School in Texas before transferring to North Carolina.
Basketball runs in the family. His father, Kirk, played at SMU, and his brother, Brad, was an NFL center from 2018-21 with the Seattle Seahawks, Cincinnati Bengals, New York Jets and Carolina Panthers.
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