Former Tennessee football quarterback Harrison Bailey is transferring to Florida, he announced Monday.

Bailey is heading for his fourth school. He spent the past two seasons at Louisville after playing for UNLV in the 2022 season after leaving Tennessee in the middle of the 2021 season.

Bailey has completed 63.2% of his passes for 1,190 yards with 10 touchdowns and three interceptions in four seasons across three programs. He capped his Louisville career by starting in a 35-34 win against Washington in the Sun Bowl after starter Tyler Shough opted out. Bailey completed 16 of 25 passes for 164 yards and three touchdowns in the bowl victory.

He has one season of eligibility left as a graduate transfer and likely is a depth addition for Florida, which returns star freshman DJ Lagway at quarterback.

Harrison Bailey is a former Tennessee football quarterback

Bailey entered the transfer portal in October 2021 after sitting as the third-string quarterback behind Hendon Hooker and Joe Milton in 2021 under coach Josh Heupel. He played in one game in the 2021 season, completing 3 of 7 passes for 16 yards and rushing for a touchdown against Tennessee Tech in September before entering the portal.

The Marietta, Georgia, native started the final three games as a freshman in the 2020 season, which featured a revolving door of quarterbacks under fired Vols coach Jeremy Pruitt. He was 48-for-68 passing for 578 yards and four touchdowns in six games in 2020.

He signed with Tennessee as a four-star recruit and the No. 99 overall prospect in the 2020 class, according to the 247Sports Composite.

Florida is Harrison Bailey’s fourth school after playing at UNLV and Louisville

Bailey landed at UNLV after leaving Tennessee. He played in six games, with one start, in 2022, completing 30 of 58 passes for 318 yards and two touchdowns. He threw for 209 yards with two touchdowns on 16-for-27 passing in a win over Nevada in the season finale.

He entered the portal again in April 2023 and transferred to Louisville in May 2023.

The 6-foot-5, 230-pound Bailey threw for 278 yards and four touchdowns in two seasons with the Cardinals.

Mike Wilson covers University of Tennessee athletics. Email him at michael.wilson@knoxnews.com and follow him on X @ByMikeWilson or Bluesky @bymikewilson.bsky.social. If you enjoy Mike’s coverage, consider a digital subscription that will allow you access to all of it.

The state of Tennessee is not a traditional hotbed for big-time basketball recruits, however, there are some exceptions along the way.

One such exception is Cleveland High School star guard Maguire Evans, who has over 1,000 career points and is well-known across the state as a sniper and a three-point shooter.

Evans has been a big part of Cleveland’s basketball success inside the state and he talked about it during a recent conversation with High School On SI.

“I feel like my season has gone pretty well,” said Evans, a deadly three-point shooter. “We are winning some games but also losing some games we should be winning. I just feel like in the second half of this season.”

Cleveland has a goal of going to states, but first things first.

“I would think my goal and our team goal is to get to Murfreesboro, but before we do that we gotta take care of our district and region, which I think we have a really big shot and winning both of those,” said Evans.

Evans has started picking up some attention from schools across the state and the nation who want him to come play for them. This process has been a “blast,” but if he continues at this rate the attention will only grow. 

“This recruiting process has been a blast, and I’m keeping all my options open right now. All the schools that have reached out to me and extended offers have definitely stood out. I really appreciate them believing in me and my basketball ability to help their programs succeed.”

Shooting isn’t something that you just wake up with talent-wise. You have to work and continue to learn every single day. That’s what separates the Stephen Curry and the Lamelo Ball type of athletes from others who don’t succeed as much.

However, for Evans, it is an obsession.

“My shooting ability definitely separates me from others in the state. Shooting has been my obsession with the game ever since I was in elementary school, and it’s something I take pride in, and making sure I do it every day with consistency.”

College is coming up fast for the Cleveland High School athlete. What will his future college team be getting?

“My future college is going to get an unselfish player, a dog on the defensive end, a knockdown shooter, a kid who just wants to win and doesn’t care who gets the credit. Whatever my coach needs me to do I’m going to do it.

“Something I tell coaches all the time that reach out to me is fit. I’m not worried about the level I play at in college. I’m just worried about the fit and making sure I fit what they are trying to do on and off the court so that we can win games. I also just want to say thank you to all the coaches who have reached out to me from all levels. Wherever I end up, I just want them to know I’m going to impact them immediately by being a vocal leader on and off the court and being a great teammate. So thank you again to all the coaches who believed in me and are still continuing to reach out to me and yes, my recruitment is still 100% open.”

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Vanderbilt basketball coach Shea Ralph had a few choices when drawing up the play down one against No. 15 Tennessee. She could give the ball to star forward Khamil Pierre, a monster athlete who’s often unstoppable in the paint. She could choose veteran Iyana Moore, the team’s best shooter. Or she could go to star freshman Mikayla Blakes, who had equaled Pierre’s 21 points in the game.

Ralph chose Pierre. She received the ball on the inbounds from Blakes, then drove to the basket, generating an open look for the lead. But she missed, and that’s when Blakes came in. When Pierre released the ball, Blakes stood just beyond the free-throw line. But by the time Pierre’s shot rolled off the rim, Blakes was there. She leaped, pushing the ball into the basket, and it dropped, giving Vanderbilt the 71-70 victory.

With that, Vanderbilt women’s basketball (15-4, 2-3 SEC) had its first win over the Tennessee Lady Vols in five years and the first rivalry win under Ralph. Blakes, a McDonald’s All American and the No. 8 player in the Class of 2024 who chose the Commodores over a long list of blue bloods, including Tennessee, had her first superstar moment. Blakes said it was the best moment of her basketball career.

“I couldn’t tell you what I saw,” Blakes said. “I mean, I saw the ball go up, and then I was thinking it was going in, and then it came off the rim right into my hands. So I had to make that.”

The Commodores led most of the game against the Lady Vols (15-3, 3-3). But a 15-2 run in the fourth quarter gave Tennessee the lead, with the Lady Vols going up by as many as five with just over two minutes to go.

But several hustle plays got Vanderbilt back in it. The Commodores forced Tennessee to call timeout when it couldn’t get the ball in on an inbounds. After that timeout, the Lady Vols got the ball in but got tied up at midcourt, giving the ball back to Vanderbilt. Pierre made two free throws to take the lead back with 31 seconds to go.

But the Commodores allowed an open layup on the other end, giving Ralph 4.9 seconds for the win. That’s when Blakes stepped in.

Vanderbilt has been in a slow build under Ralph. The Commodores finally got back to the NCAA tournament for the first time in a decade in 2024, but it was as a First Four team. Vanderbilt won all but one regular-season game against teams ranked below it in the SEC but didn’t win a single game against a higher-ranked team. The Commodores came close to their first statement win at LSU on Monday, but Vanderbilt couldn’t finish the deal and lost by six.

COURT STORMING How much Vanderbilt basketball has to pay Tennessee for storming court after upset of Vols

“I told them before this game, there’s a fork in the road for us,” Ralph said. “We’ve had a couple of really tough losses where we got smacked. We have ones where we’re really close on the road, and we lost and our team is tired of being right there. They said that we’re tired of being right there. We want to be there. And I said, Well, we must keep working. … Do we just, you know what, we’re right there, or do we really lock in and say, No, we’re going to get there now?”

The Lady Vols are known for pressuring the ball, forcing turnovers and getting in transition. But Vanderbilt forced Tennessee into a slower-paced game, one without a ton of fastbreak opportunities and just 22 combined turnovers. Both teams shot below 40% from the field, but the Commodores made a higher percentage of threes (32% to 23%) and went 19-for-22 on free throws compared to 12-for-15 for the Lady Vols.

This was the game, and the shot, that announced Vanderbilt as a force to be reckoned with in the SEC. Not just a team that will rack up wins by beating lower-tier programs but one that can win big games too. Blakes has been a big part of that. Players like her who could’ve gone anywhere out of high school, and players like Pierre and Moore who could’ve had transfer opportunities, have stayed with the Commodores because, as Ralph said, they don’t want the easy way out.

“Today, I think not only did the players buy in, but now they fully believe, because they saw what it what it is,” Ralph said. “They saw how we can do it and they achieved the result that we were after.”

Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on X, formerly Twitter, @aria_gerson.