Tennessee freshman Nate Ament. Photo By Andrew Ferguson/Tennessee Athletics
The 2025-2026 college basketball season is wrapping up in less than a month, which means time is winding down for aspiring NBA players with hopes of playing in the league next season to make an impression on scouts and coaches from the next level.
Tennessee star freshman wing Nate Ament is one of these players.
After taking a little bit of time to find his footing in the college basketball landscape, Ament has been one of the top-performing players in the country over the last six weeks or so. He’s averaging 17.4 points, 6.4 rebounds, and 2.4 assists on the season as a whole, but his scoring numbers have taken a dramatic rise in the back half of the Vols’ SEC play. Ament has looked more confident and aggressive, leading to much better scoring and processing on the court.
Since Tennessee’s double-overtime win over Texas A&M on Jan. 13, Ament has scored 20+ points in seven games. He’s reached a career-high 29 points in three of those seven games. Ament has missed Tennessee’s last two contests with an injury, but UT head coach Rick Barnes says that he expects him to be back for the Vols’ run in the SEC Tournament on Thursday.
Bleacher Report released a new NBA mock draft on Saturday, which was the final day of the regular season across the men’s college basketball landscape. B/R used a draft order simulation from Tankathon, which delivered some major surprises, including the Trail Blazers and the Atlanta Hawks taking the first two picks.
In this mock draft, Tennessee’s Nate Ament is slotted at No. 10 overall to the Memphis Grizzlies. That’s certainly something that Tennessee fans on the west side of the state would love to see after the Grizz picked up VFL Jahmai Mashack in the draft last season.