Analyst high on Pons' NBA potential, 2020-21 Vols

GoVols247: A Tennessee Volunteers athletics podcast

247Sports, Tennessee, Tennessee Volunteers, Tennessee Football, Tennessee athletics, Football, Colle

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4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2020

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

GoVols247’s Wes Rucker (from Fort Rucker Studio) and NBCSports’ college basketball writer Rob Dauster (from his home in the Washington D.C. area) convened via the magic of Al Gore’s Internets to discuss where one Tennessee senior and perhaps one Tennessee junior could play at the next level, and where things stand for Rick Barnes’ program heading into the 2020-21 season.

Dauster seems to higher than most analysts on the potential NBA future of Tennessee junior Yves Pons, the newly minted SEC Defensive Player of the Year. Pons still hasn’t announced an intention to declare for the NBA Draft without hiring an agent, but there’s no reason to believe he’d do anything else. Every college player is allowed to do that one time but still return to school as long as they don’t hire an agent, and Pons is a junior, so it makes sense to at least test the waters.

While some remain on the fence of skeptical of Pons’ professional future, at least in this country, Dauster sees things differently. He has Pons ranked No. 32 overall on the most recent version of his hot board, and he offered several reasons for that belief.

Dauster also discussed the potential NBA future of former Tennessee guard Jordan Bowden, a Knoxville native who started all four seasons for the hometown Vols and played a pivotal role in the program’s rebirth in the Barnes era. Bowden was pegged by many as a potential breakout star heading into his senior season, but a prolonged shooting slump plagued much of that season. Bowden’s elite athleticism and two-way ability still have him firmly on the radar of at least a few NBA organizations, though, and probably more than that, and Dauster spoke about Bowden’s potential going forward.

While much of the discussion with Dauster focused on Pons and Bowden, the conversation concluded with a chat about the Vols heading into next season. Putting it mildly, Dauster is very high on Tennessee heading into next season, and he offered several reasons to support that claim.

The next GoVols247 Podcast episode will be released Monday, unless major breaking news occurs before that point.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi. Good morning, afternoon, afternoon, evening. Lunch time, lunch time.
0:23.0	Hey, at least the weather's getting better during this quarantine time.
0:28.0	Trying to think of positive things to say,
0:32.0	gets a little bit tougher every day time. We'll keep trying time.
0:37.6	Whatever time of day it is boys and girls it's the right time for the go-valls
0:41.0	24-7 podcast West Rucker coming to you from Fort Rucker
0:45.2	studio on an absolutely gorgeous Thursday afternoon here in Knoxville
0:49.7	Tennessee where I believe it's a fair 58-59 degrees all we're recording this but it's
0:57.6	let's see here 105.3 degrees 108.2 degrees and 108.2 degrees, and 79.4 degrees in the three greenhouses in the backyard
1:08.8	just outside this window at Fort Rucker Studio. Hope everybody's having a good Thursday out there. I know that I guess it could be
1:16.1	Friday or Saturday or Sunday or does it really matter at this point? Every day's kind of the same. I know that we're all
1:21.5	doing the best we can during this quarantine. As always, we're going to give a shout out to all of the brave men and women on the front lines battling this COVID-19 pandemic.
1:31.8	I know that there's some real real hot spots around this country but it seems
1:35.3	like it's kind of gotten its tentacles into just about every portion of our
1:39.1	country so shout out to everyone out there fighting it. Hopefully if you're a Tennessee fan you're listening to
1:44.4	this podcast for some downtime. I'm not going to talk about this COVID thing because I'm
1:48.2	sure you've heard that quite enough but just want you to know that your
1:51.9	your efforts are very much appreciated.
1:53.8	Also the people that are still out there working, you know, in the food service industry.
1:57.6	People still producing food, people still working at grocery stores, don't want to leave y'all
2:01.6	out there, y'all are certainly brave going out there
2:03.5	and working every day. We appreciate it. Just know, know that we appreciate it.
	...

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