CHATTANOOGA – Tennessee basketball coach Rick Barnes said he loves Jonas Aidoo but he hurts that he left the Vols and transferred to Arkansas.

“Honestly, I don’t want to sound crass about it, but you move on,” Barnes said at the Big Orange Caravan at the Chattanooga Convention Center on Wednesday. “When you lose somebody, your mindset has to be, ‘Well, maybe we can improve somewhere.’

“But we believe in the University of Tennessee. We know this: There’s a lot of people who want to play for us.”

Aidoo, a 6-foot-11 forward, entered the transfer portal after an All-SEC season on UT’s Elite Eight team. On Monday, he committed to transferring to Arkansas, where he’ll play for new coach John Calipari.

Barnes said there were no hard feelings toward Aidoo or any player that left UT.

“We obviously have great love and respect for Jonas,” Barnes said. “We’ve watched him grow in our program. But again, he felt like he may want to play a different style, a different way.”

The 2024-25 SEC schedule hasn’t been released, but Arkansas and Tennessee are expected to play each other. Of course, Calipari is familiar with Aidoo from his time at Kentucky.

Rick Barnes: ‘It hurts. It always does.’

Aidoo was among four UT players that entered the portal. Redshirt freshman guard Freddie Dilione transferred to Penn State. Redshirt freshman guard D.J. Jefferson transferred to Longwood. And on Monday, sophomore forward Tobe Awaka committed to transfer to Arizona.

“Throughout my years in coaching, you have to be willing to adapt,” Barnes said. “But it hurts. It always does when you feel like you’ve really worked hard with a young person, and you get them to a point.

“But you also understand it. Believe me, we totally understand it.”

UT also has added players from the portal. It got 6-11 forward Felix Okpara from Ohio State, 6-10 forward Igor Milicic from Charlotte and 6-8 guard Darlinstone Dubar from Hofstra. And the Vols aren’t done reloading their roster.

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Barnes was quick to praise Okpara, one of the replacements for Aidoo and Awaka.

And this Big Orange Caravan stop was well suited for that because Okpara played nearby at Hamilton Heights in Chattanooga before spending his final prep year at Link Academy in Branson, Missouri.

“(Okpara) brings us a physicality that we love to have, that we haven’t consistently had there,” Barnes said. “With what we’ve seen and the way we evaluated him, I think he’s got some untapped ability offensively.

“He runs. He’s strong. And being around him, he’s impressed me with the fact that he’s got a real competitive edge about him. That’s going to fit in well with our guys.”

Okpara averaged 5.3 points, 5.0 rebounds and 1.8 blocks in 70 games in two seasons at Ohio State. He started 45 games and entrenched himself as the starting forward as a sophomore, when averaged 6.6 points and 6.4 rebounds while blocking 82 shots.

“He’s like a lot of guys his size,” Barnes said. “He’s just kind of scratching the surface in terms of where he can be. But he showed us he can do a lot. We’re going to try get him to do more than maybe he thinks he can.”

Adam Sparks is the Tennessee football beat reporter. Email adam.sparks@knoxnews.com. X, formerly known as Twitter@AdamSparks. Support strong local journalism by subscribing at knoxnews.com/subscribe.

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Lawmakers should ask their constituents what they think and then in their 2025 session start working on allowing broader access to cannabis for all Tennesseans.

• David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network Tennessee.

In 2015, former state Rep. Sheila Butt, now mayor of Maury County, openly talked about how cannabis oil versus traditional medication would help her sister, who suffered from seizures.

East Tennessee Rep. Jeremy Faison famously posted a photo of himself at a marijuana grow room during a 2016 visit to Colorado to learn more about medicinal uses for the plant.

Beth Harwell, the former Tennessee Speaker of the House, campaigned for governor in 2018 on a promise to make marijuana legal in the Volunteer State.

Ex state Sen. Steve Dickerson, a physician, advocated for alternative forms of medicine including cannabis in a 2020 guest opinion column in The Tennessean.

They all happen to be Republicans in a state with a GOP-dominated legislature. Faison is now in a leadership position as House GOP Caucus chair, but in 2015, he said: “For close to a decade we demonized a plant. We are in the early stages in America and in Tennessee in understanding there may be some benefits in this plant.”

While he is not quite so vocal about this subject as he used to be, now that the federal government is looking to change rules downgrading marijuana from a Schedule I to Schedule III drug, Faison and his colleagues should start back on a path toward broader legalization in Tennessee.

Cannabis production and sales are limited in Tennessee

The change, if approved after a public comment process, would no longer classify marijuana as among the “most dangerous and addictive substances,” according to a USA TODAY report.

Twenty-four of 50 states have legalized marijuana for recreational use and another 14 only allow it for medicinal use, according to Pew Research Center. That means the vast majority of Americans – 74% – live in a state where there is some form of broad legalization.

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Tennessee is not one of them and what is permissible is limited.

There are cannabis-derived products, such as, oils, ointments and gummies, which are allowed to be sold in the state, including CBD,  or cannabidiol, and Delta-8. In 2022, Buds & Brews became Tennessee’s first legal restaurant to serve cannabis-infused condiments and beverages.

In addition, the state allows for the legal cultivation of hemp that contains less than 0.3% of THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychotropic part of the plant. Anything beyond 0.3% is forbidden and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s official statement on its website says: “TBI is opposed to the legalization of marijuana in any form outside of the FDA and DEA approval process utilized for all other forms of medicine.”

Yet, in a state suffering an opioid abuse and death epidemic and with federal rules likely changing, it is time to change the law in Tennessee starting with broader access to medicinal care.

In his guest opinion column, Dickerson, the medical doctor and former state senator, addressed concerns that legalized marijuana could be a “gateway” drug for addiction and he responded this way: “Like any medical treatment, this is a concern that must be taken seriously. However, research clearly shows that cannabis dependency occurs in a tiny percentage of patients, and it is far safer than other types of painkillers. With proper care and supervision, the benefits of medical cannabis far outweigh these concerns.”

Americans show record support for legalizing pot

More than a decade ago, the Obama Administration stopped prosecuting people for possessing medicinal marijuana.

Congress has limited the Department of Justice’s ability to go after people in states that have legalized marijuana, according to a 2022 Congressional Research Service report.

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President Joe Biden has pardoned thousands of Americans convicted on federal counts of simple possession of marijuana.

Today, as fentanyl and other synthetic drugs are public health and criminal justice threats, legalizing marijuana could help people in pain, farmers, and state budgets at a time when revenues are flat or falling. Non-violent people would stay out of jail.

National Geographic wrote in its “Inside Marijuana” that cannabis is among the largest cash crops in the nation and the legal pot trade is outpacing the wine industry in California.

There are important concerns about potential addiction in some cases and about whether heavy state regulations create a disincentive for growers, leading people to get their recreational pot in the underground economy, thus, defeating the purpose for a legal framework.

However, popular opinion is very much in favor of legalization. The polling and public sentiment research service Gallup showed that Americans’ support for legalized marijuana grew from 12% in 1969 to a record 70% in 2023.

Lawmakers should ask their constituents what they think and then in their 2025 session start working on allowing broader access to cannabis for all Tennesseans.

David Plazas is the director of opinion and engagement for the USA TODAY Network Tennessee. He is an editorial board member of The Tennessean. He hosts the Tennessee Voices videocast and curates the Tennessee Voices and Latino Tennessee Voices newsletters. Call him at (615) 259-8063, email him at dplazas@tennessean.com or tweet to him at @davidplazas.

A 23-year-old woman and 20-year-old man drowned near a hiking trail in Tennessee on Sunday after the woman fell into a creek and the man jumped in to try and save her, authorities said.

Police responded around 7:13 p.m. to a 911 call about the pair going underwater near Rainbow Lake Trail in Signal Mountain, the Signal Mountain Police Department said.

First responders hiked about a mile down the trail when they encountered a woman waiting for them to arrive. 

The woman told officials that she was with a group of three to four people who hiked on the trail to a large creek. 

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One woman tried to cross the creek but fell into a “drop off” and went underwater, according to authorities. A man from their group then jumped in after her, but the pair never resurfaced.

Police and fire personnel jumped into the water to find and rescue both victims, the department said.

The woman fell into a “drop off” and went underwater, police said. The man jumped in after her but also disappeared beneath the water. (Hamilton County Office of Emergency Management & Homeland Security)

Rescuers found the woman in the water and pulled her onto land. They performed life-saving measures on the woman, but she was pronounced dead at the scene. 

Officials requested additional assistance while searching for the missing man. His body was eventually recovered from the water. 

CALIFORNIA MAN FALLS 300 FEET TO DEATH WHILE HIKING WITH WIFE ALONG OREGON COAST

First responders recovered the bodies of both victims. (Hamilton County Office of Emergency Management & Homeland Security)

Police later identified the woman as 23-year-old Greffania Merilus, of Cohutta, Gerogia, and the man as 20-year-old Gullson Elve, of Birchwood, Tennessee, News Channel 9 reported. 

Officials told the station that the pair were “really close friends.”

Following the two deaths, Signal Mountain Town Council Member Susannah Murdock told Local 3 News that she is calling for additional signage along the trail to warn hikers about potential dangers in the area.

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“We got this pretty sign up here that says Rainbow Lake, and it’s a beautiful place down there, but they don’t know the terrain is rocky and bumpy and can be steep in places,” Murdock said. “When we’ve had a lot of rain, there’s water that flows down there pretty rapidly.”