Freshman big man DeWayne Brown’s surprising story continues — he’s now a starter for Rick Barnes. The veteran head coach made that announcement on Monday morning, meeting with the media ahead of Tennessee’s
matchup with Louisville.
Brown will get the nod for the injured Cade Phillips, who will miss the remainder of the season with a shoulder issue.
“DeWayne is going to start tomorrow night in place of Cade,” Barnes said today.
“He’s earned it. Just that’s it. He simply, with his consistency, he earned it. And we’re going to base everything we do based on everyday practice habits and consistency because that’s what we haven’t had. Everybody has shown glimpses of this or that. We want to see consistency and, those are the guys. But I look at our front line, to be honest with you, whether it’s JP or Jaylen or Fe, those guys are all starters to me. But the fact is, the guy that’s going start is going to be the most consistent guys.”
Tennessee is left with four contributors in the post following the injury. Felix Okpara has started since he arrived in Knoxville, while both Jaylen Carey and J.P. Estrella have flashed in big ways. Tennessee hasn’t seemed to get all of them going at once however, which is something he’s looking to change.
Barnes now turns to the true freshman to help try to pull the Volunteers out of a three-game losing streak. Brown joins fellow freshman Nate Ament in the starting lineup. Another true freshman, Amari Evans, has been seeing some minutes as of late. Barnes said the guard could even see some time a the 4-spot going forward.
“Amari I think has done well,” Rick Barnes said last week on the Mike Keith show. “One thing he does, he come off the bench every game and he has rebounded. He plays with energy. He’s not afraid to compete. He had a, I thought, a big-time block at Syracuse. And he’s very competitive.”
“We’ve already started trying to teach Amari Evans, so if we ever need to go small, and because of his strength, his physicality, we think he can give us some of that. And we’ll continue to do that probably. And depending on with Nate, offensively Nate could go anywhere on the court. So we’ll play around with it, which is part of making coaching fun.”
Tennessee has tomorrow’s game against Louisville, then two tune-up games before starting SEC play. It’s getting late in non-conference play suddenly, and the Volunteers need to find some consistency. They could also use another big win to pair with Houston on their resume after dropping games to Kansas, Syracuse and Illinois.
Tip-off is set for 7 pm. ET tomorrow night in Knoxville.
