2025 four-star guard Amari Evans, a long-time Tennessee basketball target, has announced that he will make his commitment on Nov. 1. The Pittsburgh, Pa. native will decide between UT, Xavier and Pitt.
Tennessee hosted Evans the final weekend of August on an official visit. It was his second visit with the Vols, as he took an unofficial visit this past February to watch UT play South Carolina inside of Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City Center.
“I liked it,” Evans told GoVols247 about his visit at the time. “I got in and got to watch shootaround, tour the facilities and everything. I wanted to see up close how they practiced, how they were coached and how they responded to adversity. Stuff like that. They didn’t play that well, but at the same time, they only lost by four. That says a lot about their team.”
Evans is ranked by 247Sports as the No. 80 overall player in the country after recently jumping 18 spots. He’s considered by 247 as the No. 18 overall small forward and the No. 11 overall player in the state of Georgia out of Overtime Elite in Atlanta.
The 6-foot-5, 180-pound guard also took official visits to Ole Miss (Sept. 6) and Xavier (Sept. 14) over the last month in addition to Tennessee. Evans, who has a strong relationship with Vols assistant coach Rod Clark, took an official visit to Pittsburgh in June.
“To get to see him and the team and everything in person, it was everything that he told me it was going to be,” Evans said about Clark. “When I saw the team in practice, they were pretty locked in and everybody was respecting everything Coach was saying. That was smooth. The energy in the arena was different.
“With Coach Rod, it’s more than just him recruiting me. It’s not, ‘come to Tennessee and I want you here.’ It’s, ‘how are you doing? How are you developing? What can you get better at?’ Even if I didn’t go to Tennessee, I feel like we would still have a great relationship. That means a lot because he actually cares about me and not just me coming to Tennessee.”
Evans has also been able to connect with Vols point guard Zakai Zeigler on his visits to Tennessee. Evans previously played with the same AAU program, Lightning Basketball, that Zeigler played with, and is “cool” with Zeigler’s little brother. He would go watch Zeigler play on the Lightning’s 17u team, when he was in eighth grade.
“It was cool because it was like, he was just playing EYBL two or three years ago when I was in eighth grade, and now he’s the leader of the team,” Evans said. “He’s not just on the team, he’s the leader on the team. It was good to see his hard work pay off.”
Tennessee basketball currently has one commitment in the class of 2025 in four-star center DeWayne Brown out of Hoover High School in Hoover, Ala. UT signed one high school prospect last recruiting cycle in 2024 four-star guard Bishop Boswell out of Myers Park in Charlotte, N.C.
