John Fields committed to Tennessee Thursday night while on a visit to the campus, according to WBIR.com. He was in attendance for the school’s Rocky Top League championship game.
The 6-9, 225-pound Fields chose the Volunteers over Xavier, Rutgers, and Miami. As a graduate student in sports management, he will be immediately eligible to play this season.
During a TV interview, Fields cited “Coach [Bruce] Pearl and the winning tradition that he built here. And I want to be part of something special.”
Fields, a Fayetteville, N.C. native, spent two seasons at East Carolina before transferring to UNCW, where he averaged 10.2 points and a team-best 8.7 boards.
He sat out the the last four games with a knee injury.
“I just wanted to spend my last year winning, so that’s why I decided to get out [of UNCW],” Fields said.
Fields, who has one year of eligibility remaining, joins forwards Tobias Harris and Jordan McRae and guard Trae Golden in UT’s 2010 recruiting class. Harris is a Long Island native.
Rutgers had hoped to land Fields to add depth to a frontcourt that features only Jonathan Mitchell and Austin Johnson as big men.
(Video courtesy WBIR.com)
Follow Adam Zagoria on Twitter
