LAS VEGAS — Bishop Boswell wanted to play.
Duh. Of course he did. What top 100 national recruit doesn’t?
But when Boswell arrived at Tennessee in the summer of 2024, as the Volunteers’ lone high school recruit in his class, it didn’t take him long to read the room. Tennessee already had five senior perimeter players — none more important than Zakai Zeigler, the reigning SEC Defensive Player of the Year — and expectations of another deep NCAA Tournament run. The obvious mental math spit out an uncomfortable answer: a likely year of benchwarming.
“My mindset last year was, if the roles were reversed, I’d want them to cheer me on and not have a bad attitude,” Boswell said. “So just last year, supported the team any way I could.”
That meant plenty of sideline excitement… and very little on-court impact. Boswell played only 106 total minutes — never more than 11 in one game — and made a whopping three baskets across 28 appearances. Still, Rick Barnes’ senior backcourt was as good as expected — good enough, for the fifth straight season, to lead Tennessee to a top 5 national finish in adjusted defensive efficiency.
But in the Elite 8, Tennessee ran into a defense as steadfast and sturdy as its own: Houston’s. And so for the second straight season, the Volunteers fell a game shy of Barnes’ second career Final Four.
Not only that, but the second the final whistle blew against Houston, whoosh. All five seniors, gone, instantly. Barnes sat down with Boswell, his only returning guard, not long thereafter, and made his pitch.
Come back. Take over for Zeigler and Jahmai Mashack. Be our defensive stopper.
“No doubt it’s a hard role for a player to buy into and want to do it,” Barnes said, “but he’s all about team. He wants to win more than anything else.”
Eight months later, after weeks of discourse that the Vols hadn’t played anyone yet, their first substantial opponent in the Players Era Festival was… No. 3 Houston. Boswell didn’t even play a minute in the Elite 8, but entering Tuesday’s headline affair, the 6-foot-4 sophomore admittedly couldn’t help but think back to the spring.
“The defensive players we had last year, we didn’t get the job done,” Boswell told The Athletic, from a carpeted back hallway inside MGM Grand Garden Arena. “It’s my job this year to try and get that job done — and we did.”
At least it did on Tuesday, when No. 17 Tennessee outlasted Houston 76-73 for its defining win of the nonconference schedule. It’s the type of result that instantly validates Barnes’ team as not just an SEC contender, but quite possibly something more. In some ways, the Vols even out-Houstoned Houston, highlighted by a seven-minute second-half run in which Tennessee held the Cougars to a single point, while rattling off 10 of its own.
And the key to that stretch, the decisive sequence to the game?
“The kid that should be mentioned,” Sampson said, “though not a lot of people will remember his impact, but it was Bishop Boswell. He impacted that game. No idea what his future holds in this game, but that kid is a winner. He was the toughest guy on the floor tonight.”
Now, Tennessee is clearly more than just a second-year guard who scored in double figures Tuesday for the first time in his career. Backcourt mate Ja’Kobi Gillespie, a Maryland transfer, scored a team-high 22 and made six straight free throws down the stretch to keep Houston at bay. Top-five recruit Nate Ament, averaging 19 points and a team-high 7.2 rebounds coming in, struggled with foul trouble, but still made a flying tip-in in the final minutes to extend Tennessee’s cushion. That’s to say nothing of Barnes’ four-headed beast of a frontcourt, which combined for 32 points and 17 rebounds.
But for all that talent, and the totality of Tennessee’s potential, the difference against another Final Four contender was undoubtedly Boswell.
“Every coach in America,” Sampson continued, “would love to have Boswell.”
Bishop Boswell slowed down Houston’s leading scorer, Kingston Flemings, in the second half. (Stephen R. Sylvanie / Imagn Images)
That was especially true after the second-half shutdown Boswell orchestrated on Houston freshman Kingston Flemings, who torched Tennessee’s defense for a career-high 25 points. Flemings’ pick-and-roll mastery gave the Vols fits all night, until Boswell’s body turned into a stone wall and stopped letting him get straight to the cup. Per Synergy, Flemings made three of his six shots when Boswell was his primary defender and seven of his nine when guarded by anyone else.
Not perfect by any means, but against a projected one-and-done guard who had NBA scouts in attendance drooling over his dynamism? Better than anyone else on Tennessee’s vaunted defense, and plenty good enough to throw the Cougs out of their offensive flow.
“No matter who’s in front of me, my job for this team … is to play as hard as I can, be a dog, and get a stop,” Boswell told The Athletic. “That’s the whole game I’m thinking about.”
And for Tennessee to reach its season-long potential, it’ll need Boswell to continue thriving in that role.
The Vols were picked to finish third in the SEC in the preseason, behind Florida — the reigning national champions — and Kentucky, but given both those teams’ inconsistency thus far, it’s absolutely feasible that Tennessee emerges as the league’s best team. Gillespie and Ament, who account for 42.8 percent of the Vols’ scoring, are a key piece of that equation… but let’s be real.
This is Tennessee. Rick Barnes.
The Vols will go where their defense does.
And while there’s no discounting Barnes’ frontline — which has four de facto starters between J.P. Estrella, Cade Phillips, Felix Okpara and Jaylen Carey — his best teams in Knoxville have thrived because of their perimeter pressure, and preventing teams from getting the cozy shots they want to. It’s no accident that over the last three seasons, when Tennessee has made two Elite 8s and a Sweet 16, it’s held opponents under 31.2 percent from 3 — and twice under 29 percent, a top-five mark nationally. That sort of perimeter hassling makes for tougher drives, easier rim protection for the bigs in the back, and completes the puzzle that is Barnes’ defense.
It’s also exactly what Boswell provides, and what made the difference against an opponent the Vols could very easily see again come March.
“He’s becoming one of the best defensive guards in the country,” Barnes said. “We need him to keep that focus.”
Wherever Tennessee goes this season, it undoubtedly will be in large part because of its headliners. Ament, the glitzy NBA prospect. Gillespie, the seasoned veteran. This big, and that big, and the collection of them altogether.
But the unspoken key to Tennessee’s defense — to the Vols’ Final Four hopes, really — may have finally shown himself on a national stage Tuesday night.
So much for under the radar.
“You have to have a guy that plays that role,” Barnes said. “In some ways, it might be the most important role on the team.”