Class of 2025 center DeWayne Brown committed to Tennessee basketball on Saturday evening, he announced on an Instagram live.
The four-star recruit committed to Rick Barnes and the Vols over Mississippi State. Brown boasts 11 total offers and took visits to LSU, Alabama and Auburn as well as two visits to Mississippi State and a visit to Tennessee. Vols’ assistant coach Gregg Polinsky was Tennessee’s lead recruiter for the Alabama native.
“I feel like it’s a pretty good match with my game,” Brown said of Tennessee following his January. “They like to play fast just like how I play in AAU and high school. And they play inside-out with Coach Barnes which I think is good.”
Brown is coming off a junior season where he helped lead Hoover High School to a 30-3 record and a 7A AHSAA State Championship. The blue-chip recruit still has one more season of prep basketball to play before enrolling at Tennessee ahead of the 2025-26 season.
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A 6-foot-9, 250-pound center ranks as a four-star recruit and the No. 143 player in the country according to the 247sports composite rankings. The Hoover native ranks as the No. 22 center in the country and the top player in the state of Alabama in the 2025 recruiting class.
Tennessee currently has three scholarship seniors on its roster for next season— point guard Zakai Zeigler, shooting guard Jahmai Mashack and Hofstra transfer Darlistone Dubar— so will have at least two more scholarships to work with. But as this offseason has shown us, Tennessee will certainly have more scholarships to work with after players enter the transfer portal.
Brown becomes Tennessee’s first commit in the 2025 recruiting cycle. They are also actively pursuing Caleb Wilson, Shon Abaev, EJ Walker and Aleks Alston and have hosted all of them on visits to date.
Tennessee’s recruiting class now ranks No. 13 nationally in the 2025 recruiting cycle according to the 247sports team rankings.
