"Somebody floated the idea jokingly," Haase said of the helicopter ride. "I said, 'Why not?' That has to be our attitude - why not. Let's go bigger and better. Yes, I was scared when we took off, but it was pretty cool though.

"Our players had fun. I had a ton of fun."

The event, which lasted two and a half hours, first featured wheelchair basketball between the Women's National Wheelchair Team and selected UAB women's and men's players.

The women's basketball team was introduced, along with first-year head coach Randy Norton and his staff. The women's basketball team won the dance contest, beating the softball, men's soccer and men's basketball team.

The 3-point contest was won by the duo of freshman guard Denzell Watts from the men and senior guard Ashley Grimes from the women.

Finally, 6-foot-5 senior Preston Purifoy outlasted 6-foot-5 junior Robert Brown in the dunk contest. The other three who didn't make the final round were senior Jordan Swing and freshmen Tyler Madison and Tosin Mehinti.

Purifoy's best dunk was his first. He jumped over 6-foot-6 K.C. Whitaker and Whitaker's twin sister Hannah Beth, who isn't much shorter, for a clean dunk. In the final round, Whitaker lobbed it off the side of the backboard and Purifoy caught it and threw it down.

"I didn't do as good as I wanted to last year," Purifoy said. "I wanted to come back this year and put on for the crowd.

"I think the people that I was jumping over, they were more nervous than I was. This was something we just started practicing last night around 12 at night."