Tennessee’s preseason buzz is already here, and Juke Harris is right in the middle of it.
With the Vols set to host Xavier on Thursday evening for their first exhibition of the preseason, the SEC rolled out its preseason All-SEC teams as voted on by the media. Harris, the Tennessee guard and Wake Forest transfer, landed on the first team.
He was listed with Florida’s Rueben Chinyelu and Thomas Haugh, Mississippi State’s Josh Hubbard and Vanderbilt’s Tyler Tanner.
Harris arrives in his junior year after a huge sophomore season at Wake Forest. He averaged 21.4 points per game while shooting 44.4% from the field and 33.2% from three. He also added 6.5 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game.
Rick Barnes has been working with Harris as he adjusts to what Tennessee needs from him, and the message has been clear.
“I know he wants to win as a player. I know he does,” Barnes said about Harris.
“That’s the number one thing he wants to do. I also know that his dream is to play in the NBA, too, and when we sat down to talk about it when we were in L.A. that day, we told him everything he wanted is on the other side of hard.
It’s going to be hard. If you’re going to do everything that you’d like to accomplish, not just individually, but as a team, it’s going to be hard.
And you can talk about it at the time, but once you step in and step on campus and start every day getting into the blender, you find out it is really hard.
“And it’s not just physically. I think most guys can handle that when they get to this level.
Most guys can, but it’s the mental part. And Juke is no different than Nate Ament, Chaz Lanier, Dalton Knecht.
I mean, it’s a whole new system for him. But like those guys - and he’s pretty much where those guys were - he’ll just keep getting better and better as the season goes on.”
The rest of the SEC’s first team includes Rueben Chinyelu, Juke Harris, Thomas Haugh, Josh Hubbard and Tyler Tanner.
The second team features Amari Allen, Alex Condon, Milan Momcilovic, Jordan Smith Jr. and Matas Vokietaitis.
The third team is made up of PJ Haggerty, Malachi Moreno, Tahaad Pettiford, David Punch and Billy Richmond III.
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