Tennessee basketball adds its first commitment for the 2025 class with top-ranked player from Alabama

Barnes adds a big man as the initial piece for the ‘25 cycle

Per On3’s Joe Tipton, class of 2025 post player DeWayne Brown announced his commitment to Tennessee Saturday.

Brown, a Hoover, Alabama native, is listed as the No.1 player in the state via the 247 composite rankings and is the lone four-star prospect from ‘Bama in the 2025 cycle. He’s also listed as the 22nd-ranked center in the country and sits inside the national top-150 at 143rd overall.

Being a ‘25 commit, Brown won’t help fill the void of big men on the team next season, as combo guard Bishop Boswell is the only player in the incoming 2024 class,

As things currently stand, Tennessee has just two post players on its roster in sophomores JP Estrella and Cade Phillips. Ideally, Tennessee picks up at least one big man with a few years of eligibility remaining from the transfer portal for next season so that Brown isn’t put in a position where there’s pressure for him to be a major contributor his freshman year. Even so, Brown said that his aim is to be ready to play when gets to Knoxville.

“Tennessee fans are getting a hard worker,” Brown said. “Somebody that is there for the community and somebody that is ready to play.”

Listed anywhere from 6-9, 235 to 6-10, 250, Brown had two finalists in his recruitment and picked the Vols instead of Mississippi State. The Class 7 Player of the year also held offers from or made visits to Alabama, Auburn, Mississippi State — obviously — Georgia Tech, Providence, Cincinnati and LSU, with the list compiled from McKee’s article and On3’s recruiting page.

He visited Tennessee twice, with the first being a trip to Knoxville in January to watch UT win against Ole Miss and the second being his official visit in February when the Vols beat LSU.

He’s the lone commitment in the 2025 class to this point, but Tennessee is at least in the running for five-stars and top-10 ranked players Caleb Wilson (6-10 forward/ wing), Maleek Thomas (6-4 PG), and top-30ish player, Malachi Moreno (listed anywhere from 6-10 to 7-1, forward/ center), among others.

There’s not much way in evaluations for Brown via the major recruiting sites, so I poked around and found some highlights.

This tape is from his game against the Dale Pirates when he went for a double-double and helped give Dale what looks to be its only loss listed of the year.

Notes for the next video: There’s a lot of snippets of Salim London, the No. 2-ranked player in Alabama. But Brown is easy to spot being the biggest guy on the court.

• Fast forward to the 2;10ish mark for the basketball to start
• 3:50 mark for pass out of a double team
• 4:14 mark for a dunk
• 4:40 mark for a post catch and drop step that leads to a layup — but Brown steps out of bounds on the play
• 5:33 mark for another post catch where he ends up getting fouled
• 6:05 mark for an offensive rebound, put-back layup
• 7:55 mark for a post-catch dunk
• 8:30 mark for a steal, outlet pass and a post-up, and-1 layup
• 9:48 mark for a block that leads to a run-out dunk attempt
• 11:45ish mark for a post catch and pass out of a double team for an made 3

These tapes are far too small of a sample size to make any determination, and he still has a full season of high school left to play, but he didn’t display much eye-popping athleticism defensively or on the glass. He does seem to have a knack for keeping the ball high on the post-entry passes shown, which is a good fundamental building block for a post player’s offensive repertoire. Either way, he earned high praise from his high school coach in a quote from McKee’s piece that indicates Brown is the kind of person Rick Barnes would recruit:

He’s in an hour before we get here to start every day and he’s usually the last guy out of the gym,” Brown’s high school basketball coach, Scott Ware, told GoVols247. “DeWayne is a great kid. He’s a guy that doesn’t want to disappoint you. He’s going to work and do what he needs to do. He’s a satisfier. He wants you to be happy with him and no matter how hard you push him or what the agenda is, he’s going to try to do what he can to make you feel good about what he’s doing.”

I couldn’t find his season stats, but according to the 247 report, by the end of his tenure with Hoover, he’ll have been a four-year starter who helped lead his team to back-to-back state titles in the last two seasons. And last year, his junior season, he averaged 15.5 PPG, 9.5 rebounds, two assists and 2.6 blocks — if my math is correct, as his blocks are listed at “87,” for his season total instead of a per-game average.

It’s a long way until Brown would make it to campus, but snagging the No.1 player in Alabama is a good way to start the 2025 class off.