No. 4 College Basketball Recruit Reacts to Big Tennessee Announcement

The Tennessee Volunteers’ bid for a national championship fell short when they lost in the Elite Eight round of the men’s NCAA Tournament to the Houston Cougars, which was their second loss in as many years in that round of March Madness.

But there is reason for Volunteers fans to be hopeful for next season. A number of promising players have committed to the team from the transfer portal, including power forward Jaylen Carey and guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie.

On Monday, Tennessee took another step toward possibly going further in next year’s NCAA Tournament. It signed Nate Ament, a five-star high school recruit from Virginia.

Ament reacted to the news on Instagram with a house emoji.

He’s a 6-foot-9, 215-pound forward who averaged 19.0 points, 10.0 rebounds and 2.2 assists per game last season as a high school senior at Highland School, a program he led to the Virginia Independent Schools Athletic Association (VISAA) Division I state title.

He also represented the United States last year in the FIBA Under-18 Americas Championship and earned a gold medal.

Ament is considered to be someone with a relatively high ceiling due to his raw scoring skills and ample athleticism. As a result, he’s been ranked as one of the top three or four recruits in the nation this year.

He said that Rick Barnes, who will be his coach at Tennessee, feels he can make it to the NBA very soon.

“Coach Barnes sees me as a one-and-done type player,” Ament said. “He has done it before with Kevin Durant. He sees me as that kind of guy for his program. I built a great relationship with the coaching staff. I trust them a lot, and they have big goals for me. I think they’ll do a great job of developing me as a player and a young man. I trust the coaches to help me get to the next level.”

Ament reportedly had offers from Duke and Kentucky among other schools, but in the end, he opted to wear Tennessee orange this fall.