AUSTIN, Tex. — Jordan Gainey’s shot bounced twice on the rim before falling softly off the front iron. Darlinstone Dubar came flying down the lane, grabbed the ball and emphatically threw it down with two hands to pull Tennessee even with Texas in the second half of the Vols’ 74-70 win at Texas on Saturday night.
“I feel like that dunk was really a turning point in the game,” Tennessee point guard Zakai Zeigler said postgame. “It was. JG we felt like the ball was about to go in, but it came off the rim (and) Dstone just came flying in the big dunk, man, it just flipped everybody. Energy. I was saying that to him like, ‘yo, you just changed the game. You don’t even know. You just changed the game.'”
At the very least the play was an inflection point. The slam tied the game at 56-56 with six minutes and change to play, pulling Tennessee even with Texas for the first time in over seven minutes.
Tennessee didn’t trail by more than two points again and it was Dubar’s right wing triple, where Jayson Kent’s close out knocked him to the ground, that gave the Vols the lead for good and was the transfer forward’s favorite play of the night.
“I told myself as soon as he gave it to me that I’m going to go take the lead,” Dubar said postgame.
It was Dubar’s third of three made triples on the night as the Hofstra transfer gave the Vols a critical 12 points and six rebounds off the bench on a night when the SEC’s leading scorer Chaz Lanier went for just 10 points.
The 6-foot-6 wing gave Tennessee his best game of the year in a season-high 17 minutes. But it was the way he did it that stood out. Dubar played loose and confident. He didn’t hesitate and displayed a fire we haven’t seen from him in games or practice alike.
“I talk to him a lot,” Zeigler said. “Like, ‘yo, when it come down to games like that, it come down to execution, but it’s gonna be games that we just need to hoop and play ball. And you’re gonna have to just hoop and play.’ A couple days ago we was telling him, like, ‘yo, just play, play more— just play more free. Like, don’t go play so much as tense.’ And I feel like he did a great job with that tonight.”
As for the Dubar that was talking trash to Longhorn players and fans alike? Well Zeigler has seen that too.
“The second day (of summer runs) he came in, he was like, ‘man, I’m guarding you.’ And he was just talking trash to me the whole time,” Zeigler said. “He was trying to bump me around. We was just trying to go back and forth, but him just having that energy. I knew from day one, just me and him, even on his visit, that he was going to bring that type of vibe and that type of energy.”
Tennessee believes there’s more Dubar can give them and there’s evidence to back it up. He came to Tennessee this summer fresh off a season where he’d made 73 three-pointers.
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Entering Saturday’s game, Dubar hadn’t made more than one three-pointer in a single game all season and had just five on the season. He hit seven three-pointers in a a 24-point performance at Duke a season ago.
“He just played with a force that we need him to do it,” Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes said. “And, again, we tell him all the time, I mean, he can really shoot the ball. He can really shoot it. One of the things that when we looked at him in the portal, anybody that can go into Cameron Indoor Stadium, make five or six threes in a game there, tells you that he’s not afraid to play.”
That three-point shooting could become all the more important if SEC opponents keep sagging off Jahmai Mashack and daring him to shoot, something that disrupted Tennessee’s spacing both at Florida and Texas this week.
With just nine healthy scholarship players and a front court that’s injured, Tennessee needs to be able to lean on Dubar for more minutes with reliable defense and rebounding.
“I feel like he bring in some type of, more toughness to us that he might get some tough buckets inside,” Zeigler said.
If those minutes are anything like what he gave the Vols in Austin, then Tennessee has a needed weapon off the bench.
“I hope this is will be a way that he can say, ‘hey, you know, I can even get it to another level,’” Barnes said.
