Tennessee guard Santiago Vescovi announces he's returning for fifth season

Tennessee and head men’s basketball coach Rick Barnes got some great news about a star player sticking around as guard Santiago Vescovi announced he’s coming back for a fifth season. Vescovi, the Volunteers leading scorer in 2022-23, played during the Covid-19-altered season and has an extra year of eligibility to use.

He announced the decision to return on his Instagram page on Tuesday evening. With the possibility to go pro or perhaps transfer, along with coming back, speculation swirled. Vescovi put it to bed on Tuesday.

“I need to clear the air about the rumors going around about me. I’m only going to say this once: They are absolutely true. See you next season Vol Nation,” Vescovi said.

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Vescovi led Tennessee in scoring last season, averaging 12.5 points per game on a team that featured an array of double digit and high-single digit scorers. He was also second on the team in assists per game and is a capable rebounder, pulling down more than four a game from the guard spot.

And following a season in which Tennessee made it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019 — and without a full complement of players — getting back Vescovi gives reason for plenty of optimism in Knoxville heading into next season.

Vescovi became the Tennessee lead guard late last season due to injuries

When Zakai Zeigler tore his ACL late in the season, it became Vescovi’s show to run. And the guard learned a lot during that stretch of play.

“(I’m) definitely learning to play more on the ball now,” Vescovi said then. “We’re missing a big part of our offense with Zakai not being out there. But I think the other guys are doing a great job stepping up.”

Vescovi added then that every member of the Vols, young or old, must be ready to do whatever they need to in order to keep Tennessee’s season alive.

“The old guys and the new guys are doing a great job of sticking together. At this point, if we want to win? We know we’re going to have to play together, even more now that we don’t have Zakai,” Vescovi said. “Everybody is going to have to put more effort on offense and defense every single time that we’re out there. We definitely miss him but we’ve still got enough players to go out there and do our thing.”