PHILADELPHIA — Ja’Kobi Gillespie ran a three-on-two breakaway. Tennessee basketball’s senior guard has Bishop Boswell to the far wing and DeWayne Brown II streaking on the close side.
As he approached the tip of the March Madness logo, he flipped his eyes to his left side and fired a bounce pass. Brown picked up the ball at the 3-point line and took one power dribble with Almar Atlason closing at the rim.
It didn’t matter.
Brown punched the posterizer down as Atlason lowered his arms into the face of Brown — and-one.
“First March Madness points of my career was an and-one dunk,” Brown said with a smile.
Brown converted the ensuing free throw, putting the Vols ahead 34-19 with 5:54 remaining in the first half. Tennessee used the fire ignited within to outpace Miami (Ohio) 78-56 to advance to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
Brown finished the game with five points — adding a second dunk later in the contest — and reeling in two rebounds in eight minutes of action.
“It got everyone turnt, and we just started picking up,” center Felix Okpara said.
Tennessee outscored Miami (Ohio) by four points over the last six minutes of the first half to take a 51-32 lead in the locker rooms. His dunk was part of an overall 18-4 run the Vols pieced together.
In the meantime, the RedHawks were in the midst of a six-plus-minute drought without a made basket.
“It kind of just set the tone,” star freshman Nate Ament, who finished without a point, said. “We knew what type of game this was going to be aggressive from the jump.”
Tennessee played away from the inside early and overtook Miami (Ohio) on the defensive side. The Vols held the RedHawks to a season-low 35% from the floor and held them to 13 points lower than their previous low in points.
It was more important on the offensive side, where Tennessee fell into the 3-point shooting game that Miami (Ohio) brings to the table. The Vols won the shooting battle from beyond the arc, drilling 9-of-20 to the RedHawks’ 7-for-29.
The big men earned another 40 points in the paint, including a 9-for-9 mark on dunks.
“When guys make big plays like that, it gives the whole team confidence,” J.P. Estrella said. “Gets the fan base fired up, and just brings the energy to the gym and when we have that, I mean, we feel like we’re a great team.”
“It just impacts the whole group, really,” Clarence Massamba said. “Any time some kind of action like that happens, everybody takes a step forward and it’s just like, everybody wants to bring a similar energy.”
Was there an ulterior motive? Well, “definitely,” Brown says.
Every other game, Estrella wagers a $100 bet across the locker to Brown if he dunks on somebody in a game. That bet cashed for the freshman big man playing in his first March Madness game.
“I told him at halftime if he did it again, I’ll have to give him another $100,” Estrella said. “I wish he did, but he was close. DeWayne played great tonight.”
For a team that head coach Rick Barnes questioned the identity of, Burg pointed to the dunk as an identity setter for the Vols in the early postseason.
“I have never seen him do that before and coming here on the biggest stage and being able to do that, that means, not just DB, but this team got a lot more to improve — we can do that,” Burg said.
Can Brown really jump like that?
On Jan. 31, after Tennessee defeated Auburn in Food City Center, Nate Ament joked in a press conference that Brown could not jump over two stacks of paper. Fast forward to March, Brown proved he could get above the rim and put one down over a defender.
That begged a question: Did Brown’s teammates really think he could get up like that? Results varied, but not by much.
The rest of Brown’s teammates didn’t have the same backing of his vertical abilities. Most tried to find him in the locker room when answering to make sure he heard them.
Brown proved the people closest to him wrong. But the success can only linger so long before the Vols return to play. Tennessee takes on No. 3-seeded Virginia on Sunday at Xfinity Mobile Arena.
