How Alcoa turned TSSAA boys basketball state tournament into 'Dunk City'
· Yahoo Sports
MURFREESBORO — Alcoa didn’t go into the TSSAA boys basketball state tournament trying to do anything differently than it had all season.
But it did make one big change.
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The Tornadoes unofficially renamed Murfreesboro “Dunk City.”
Alcoa junior Jamir Dean scored a game-high 18 points and added nine rebounds in a 77-33 victory over Fayette-Ware in the Class 3A quarterfinals on March 18. That included a violent dunk in the lane as Alcoa (22-13) finished with eight of them against the Wildcats (26-5).
The Tornadoes tallied three dunks in the game’s first four minutes alone as they advanced to face the winner of Tullahoma and Tennessee in the state semifinals at 3:15 p.m. ET March 20.
“I think I had two-plus,” Dean said recounting his dunks. “The dunks, it just like brings us up. We get hype when we play (like that).”
And it’s common for this group, Dean said, to get those types of baskets. Senior forward Jay Kirk had 16 points — off what he estimated were five dunks — and added nine rebounds.
Alcoa coach Ryan Collins let his team have its fun after a couple of big dunks in transition. But he screamed for players to get back on defense, and the Tornadoes responded by stifling Fayette-Ware into 11-of-52 shooting. Alcoa also won the rebounding battle 46-31.
Rebounds led to runouts, and the Tornadoes knew what to do from there.
Alcoa also found easy dunks in its halfcourt sets. Late in the second quarter, Dean dunked on a defender inside, then Kirk followed with another slam as part of a 12-0 run that gave Alcoa its largest lead to that point, 38-17.
The hits kept coming against Fayette-Ware, which trailed by as many as 44 points while playing without Mr. Basketball finalist Markylon Terry. The Wildcats were one of the hottest teams in 3A to close the season, winning 18 of their last 19.
Senior guard Condis Cherry added 17 points for the Tornadoes, who won the Class 2A state title in 2023 and 2024, and were runners-up in 2025 before moving up to 3A.
The Tornadoes are winding down what Collins called a "roller-coaster" season. The challenges included an injury to Cherry, who just returned in January. There were two four-game losing streaks along the way.
But their state tournament opener was pretty straightforward.
“There were a lot of easy ones out there today,” Collins said. “Why were there easy ones? Because we did our job at a high level defensively … And when you’ve got the two best rebounders on the floor (Dean and Kirk) and get stops, what does it allow you to do? Get runouts. And it turned into dunk city.”
Tyler Palmateer covers high school sports for The Tennessean. Have a story idea for Tyler? Reach him at [email protected] and on the X platform,@tpalmateer83.
He also contributes to The Tennessean's high school sports newsletter, The Bootleg.Subscribe to The Bootleg here.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Alcoa reaches Class 3A TSSAA boys basketball state tournament semifinals