With Christmas coming in a couple days, I thought I would share with you another awesome, inspiring story from my past athletic career to get you in that wonderful holiday spirit.  As many of you know, I graduated from Indiana University.  IU is having a basketball resurgence this year and recently defeated #1 ranked Kentucky with a buzzer beater 3 point shot.  A friend of my parents had sent my mom the link to the story with reference of remembering when I had done the same thing.  I think the friend’s memory is a little fuzzy because my buzzer beater wasn’t exactly like that.

First of all, I didn’t play basketball for the Hoosiers when I was there.  I guess Bobby Knight had no use for a 6′ 1″ shooting guard that couldn’t dribble to save his life.

Second of all, the story goes like this.  My Columbus Academy team was playing one of our rivals Grandview.  The basketball season had been altered because our football team had made a deep run into the playoffs.  So, we had an abbreviated pre-season, a few scrimmages to get ready, and we started the season running.  Not yet, clicking together and shaking the rust off us as we went.

Grandview was our second game this season and we were playing them at our place.  I was a junior starting at the 2 position.  We had a new basketball coach that year who had changed the philosophy to more of an offensive team from a defensive team.  So our 2 hour practices went from an hour and 45 minutes of defensive drills, then 15 minutes of offensive to the reverse.  Personally, that didn’t bother me one bit.  I was a 2 guard, basically a shooting guard, and was told to use my speed and sprint down the sidelines once we had secured the defensive rebound to look for easy fastbreak points.

Grandview always played us tough.  They loved trying to beat us, along with every other team in our league, so tonite turned out to be a battle.  At the end of regulation, it was a tie game.  We played one overtime and that didn’t settle it either, so we had to go into double overtime.  I was thinking this would be the last period.  I needed to do something to allow us to the win the game.  I was envisioning hitting the big shot in my mind.

As the overtime was winding down, we were still trading blows.  With little time left, Grandview had the ball and missed a shot to untie the game.  With seconds left, our post player secured the rebound and dribbled out of traffic.  I saw the rebound and started streaking down the left sideline getting behind Grandview’s last line of defense.  Our post player saw me streaking and launched a pass to me.  Knowing I had to get the shot off quick, I took a dribble, and hoisted up the game winning shot, not a 30 footer, or a 3 pointer, but a mighty power lay-up with 1 second left.  They didn’t have any time outs and in those days the clock didn’t stop on a made basket so we won the game.

Yes, my buzzer beater was a lay-up.  Yes, I was kidding about envisioning hitting the big shot.  I was just running around having fun and just happened to be in the right place at the right time.  Hey, we won the game and that’s all that mattered.  I actually hit a legit game winning shot in an intramural game at Indiana, but that is a story for another time.

I hope you enjoyed this.  I appreciate any comments or feedback you have.  Hope you have a great Christmas, a great holiday, and we’ll see you soon.