Tennessee head coach Donnie Tyndall confirmed Friday during a radio appearance on the Knoxville News Sentinel Sports Page that freshman Jabari McGhee will redshirt instead of making a return to the court in the upcoming weeks.

McGhee, a 6-foot-8, 210-pound forward, suffered a fracture in his right foot on Dec. 17 during the Volunteers 83-72 loss to North Carolina State. Since then, Tyndall has discussed the possibility of redshirting the Albany, Georgia native, but hadn’t made up his mind until this week.

“He’s a young kid,” said Tyndall during his media availibility inside Thompson-Boling Arena on Friday. ”I want him to have a bright future, and I think he does. I don’t want to jeopardize one year over three, four or five games.”

Before injuring his foot, McGhee averaged 4.4 points and 3.8 rebounds while playing 12.9 minutes per game for the Vols. In the nine games he played in this season, he started two.

McGhee’s best output of the season came against Santa Clara in the Orlando Classic on Nov. 27, 2014 when he scored eight points on 4-of-5 shooting and secured nine rebounds, six of which were offensive.

“He was helping us before he got injured,” assistant coach Al Pinkins said. “He was playing quality minutes, rebounding the basketball and he was really good in our zone defense. We’ve missed him this year.”

In McGhee’s absence, the Vols have had to rely heavily on their two other freshman forwards Willie Carmichael and Tariq Owens, who have combined to average 4.2 points and 3.4 rebounds per game. Both healthy members of the freshman duo have racked up more fouls than points (Carmichael 83-82, Owens 29-19).

“He’s probably the difference this year in two to four games won just because of his physicality,” Tyndall said. “He was getting better and better, and was the most physical of those front line guys. We’ve been in foul trouble with Willie (Carmichael) and Tariq (Owens) all year, so he’s a guy that could’ve been able to play 18 to 22 minutes a game and given us that physical front line guy.”