Tennessee redshirt freshman guard Freddie Dilione V to enter NCAA Transfer Portal
Freddie Dilione’s Tennessee basketball career never got off the ground. Now Dilione is headed out, with the redshirt freshman guard entering the NCAA Transfer Portal.
The former four-star shooting guard in the 2022 recruiting class was never able to consistently crack the rotation this season. He enrolled at Tennessee in January 2023, sitting out as a redshirt for the second half of last season, but rarely saw the floor during his redshirt freshman season.
He appeared in 18 games this season, but got off the bench only seven times in February and March.
He played five minutes or less in 11 of his 18 games, averaging 1.8 points and 0.6 rebounds in 5.3 minutes per game. Dilione, a Fayetteville, N.C., native, was ranked No. 44 overall as a recruit. He was the No. 3 shooting guard and the No. 1 player in the state of North Carolina in 2022.
Freddie Dilione: Former 4-star prospect, ranked No. 44 overall in 2022
Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said in December that Dilione’s lack of playing time came down to inconsistency.
“I want to know what we’re going to get every day,” Barnes said at the time. “… That’s what it’s all about.”
“I think you see it in practice,” Barnes added. “There’s a process that we believe in, we go through … I think Freddie, not unlike a lot of freshmen, comes in and it is so much different than he probably thought.”
Dilione was a four-star prospect out of Word of God Christian Academy in Fayetteville, N.C. He was ranked No. 3 among shooting guards and No. 1 in the state of North Carolina.
Dilione committed to Tennessee in September 2022, picking the Vols over Wake Forest, VCU and Virginia. The Vols had talks with Dilione and his family about reclassifying and joining the program before the season, but they opted to stay put at the time.
With Dilione moving up to 2022, Tennessee finished with a three-man 2023 signing class: Four-star center JP Estrella, four-star small forward Cameron Carr and three-star power forward Cade Phillips.
On3 Scouting Report: Freddie Dilione V
“Freddie Dilione is a confident bucket getter. He has good positional size with lengthy arms and broad shoulders. He is comfortable on the ball. Dilione is naturally an off-guard, secondary ball-handler, although he has shown he can be a primary ball-handler in pick-and-roll-type situations. The reads are the question, decisively getting to his spots and scoring off the ball. Dilione is a good straight-line athlete, and his confidence and ability to score on the ball are notable.”
