Breaking Down a Buzzer-Beater

During the last hours of December 28, 2010 -- or the first hours of December 29, depending on which time zone you happened to be in -- Kyle Pisco hit an unforgettable shot that just about no one in Lakewood actually saw.

The shot itself was nothing special. It was just a clean jumper from deep on the right wing, about 16 or 17 feet from the basket. Pisco, a senior guard for the basketball team, has hit thousands and thousands of shots just like it during the last decade or so. But the circumstances around the shot were what will make it one of the bigger moments in Eagles history.

Pisco and the Eagles (9-4) were a continent away, on the court at Torrey Pines High School in San Diego, one of 79 teams playing in the prestigious Holiday Classic tournament. They had the night before, and their next opponents were the Taft Toreadors, a team that was then undefeated and ranked in the top three in California and in the top 15 nationally. The Eagles were decided underdogs.

And Pisco with that jump shot from the right wing.

At the buzzer.

After that 77-75 win, the Eagles lost their next two games at the tournament -- one to a team ranked in the top 25 nationally, the other to a team that was unranked at the time but is now ranked in the top 15 -- but the win over the Toreadors proved a lot. To the folks in the bleachers. To the folks on the other bench. To other teams in the tournament. To their fans. To their coaches. To themselves. (For more on big shots in Eagles history see "Shots Heard 'Round the Arena".)

“We showed that night,” Flannery said, “that we belonged.”

Here, Flannery, Pisco and the rest of the Eagles on the court for the shot break down who, what, when, where, why and just exactly how everything happened. Oh, and if you were one of the many who missed the shot the first time around, feel free to follow the action on video.

FLANNERY: We were up against a nationally-ranked team that was a lot bigger and a little more physical than we were. 

MIKE NEWTON, junior guard: Their point guard was taller than our whole starting five.

FLANNERY: During the pregame, we definitely had a look like, ‘How are we going to hang around with these guys?’ But we played through the course of the game and just prior to that stretch run, we had a seven- or eight-point lead.

The Toreadors closed from nine points down after three quarters to four -- at 74-70 -- with about 16 seconds remaining after Taft senior point guard Khiry Williams hit a 3-pointer from the top of the key.

DELBERT LOVE, senior guard: I saw he was wide-open, and I was mad. I thought, ‘I have to get over there.’ Then he hit it, and I was even more mad.

Toreadors junior guard Steve Jones fouled Pisco almost immediately on the inbounds pass. Pisco walked the length of the court and hit the first free throw to stretch the Eagles’ lead to 75-73. Then he missed the second free throw. It was the third missed free throw in six attempts for Pisco, but he was hardly the only Eagle who struggled from the line that game -- the team hit only 17 of 30 attempts.

FLANNERY: They got the rebound and brought the ball basically all the way up the court in a fast-break fashion. They were coming right at us.

PISCO: I’m up front a little bit, Elijah (Brown, sophomore guard) is behind me, and I see the guy blow right by Elijah.

FLANNERY: I don’t see us stopping the basketball. Instead, I see two defensive players -- Myles Hamilton and Elijah Brown -- and they let him go one dribble to his left and nobody picked him up, and he went right to the basket. So I was a little upset.

BROWN: I was in front. He got by me, and I figured there was nothing left to do on that play. It was better to move on. He was by me at that point and there was nothing we could do. We had to move on and win the game, instead of just putting our heads down. We had to push it back up and hit the shot.

PISCO: It was smart in a sense, because I know he didn’t want to foul and give them one more foul shot to put them ahead.

The player neither Brown nor Hamilton fouled was Toreadors sophomore guard Kris Yanku, who sprinted down the left side of the court, slalomed past Brown, then transitioned the ball from his left hand to his right and bounced it off the backboard. It was only his second basket of the game. It also tied the score at 75-75 with seven seconds on the clock.

FLANNERY: If it was under five seconds, I probably would have called a timeout to stop the clock. If there’s more than five seconds, it’s so hard to draw up a full-court play, so to let your team take the ball out of bounds and run is a big advantage. That was definitely going through my head. Unless we were having a hard time getting the ball inbounds or we saw pressure, I wasn’t going to call timeout.

LOVE: I was supposed to take the ball out. I hadn’t seen anybody around the ball, and I was just thinking maybe we can get a last-second shot. I just wanted to get it up quick.

NEWTON: They were already denying me, so I was looking for somebody else to take the ball. In transition, all five of us can handle the ball, so when they started to guard me, I knew another guard was going to be open.

LOVE: I looked down the court and saw Elijah and Pisco were down there. So I passed to Myles.

NEWTON: When I saw Delbert pass the ball to Myles, I knew Myles was going to make something happen.

HAMILTON: I look up and saw the kid who made the layup and one of their guards right in the middle of the court, trying to find someone. I just knew that someone was wide open, because there were two of them at the center of the court. So someone was wide open. As I’m looking at them, I see Kyle wide open, so I took two dribbles and just put it up there for him to go get it.

Make no mistake, the pass was as important as the shot. Hamilton fired a gorgeous pass from the left side of the court, just in front of the Toreadors’ 3-point arc, to Pisco in the far right corner. It traveled perhaps 65 or 70 feet. And it was perfect.

PISCO: I’m sprinting up the right side of the court. I saw Delbert get the ball into Myles, and Myles is pretty good at pushing the ball up the court. He saw me on the sideline, hit me and I took the shot.

BROWN: I ran the left side and had to get to the block, so as soon as the pass came down, I went to the other block. When the shot went up from Pisco, my first reaction was to get the rebound or the tip if it came off.

HAMILTON: As soon as Pisco squared up, I knew it was probably going to go in. When he shot it, I was just running down the court, saying, ‘Please go, please go, please go.’

NEWTON: Once I saw Pisco caught the ball from Myles, I knew he was going to make the shot, because he’s one of our best shooters. And he made the shot.

BROWN: I had a perfect view of the shot and I knew it was going to go in.

And it did.

If you watch the video, all five Eagles appeared to know exactly what to do. That was no accident. They practice transitions for at least 10 minutes -- and often 25 or 30 minutes -- each practice. They know instinctively what to do and where to go. That was why Love took the inbounds, why Newton and Hamilton moved to receive the pass, why Brown and Pisco sprinted upcourt in their lanes. They also knew Flannery wasn’t going to call a timeout -- he said so during a timeout just minutes prior -- so they were ready.

FLANNERY: Right when he shot it, I knew it was in. It was one of the shots, he was right in front of us, and you just knew he was going to make it. Our crowd went crazy -- all 30 or 40 of them -- jumping up and down and having a good time.

BROWN: We were the underdogs. Nobody thought we were going to beat Crenshaw, and nobody thought we were going to beat Taft. So playing two of the top five teams in California, we didn’t have anything to lose.

The celebration was a blur. The players jumped around in front of the relatively modest throng of Eagles fans. Most of the coaches threw up their hands. Assistant coach Happy Dobbs pumped his left fist. Flannery just ... did nothing.

FLANNERY: In games like those, I just turn and walk to the other bench and shake their hand. I do believe Mike Newton jumped on my back, and I just kind of shoved him off and said, ‘Go jump on the players.’ 

NEWTON: When I jumped on his back, he turned around and I ran away. 

After the game, when the team was off the court and in its locker room, Flannery said he allowed his emotions to show just a little.

FLANNERY: I told them it was a big win. It was kind of one of those stepping stones our team took to know that we can play at a higher level and compete there. Any time you go to a national tournament, you always wonder if you belong. We showed that night that we belonged. I think we impressed a lot of people, and we even surprised ourselves that we could play at that level. That’s the message I passed along after the game -- that we do belong, and that if we play together and stay focused, we can beat just about anybody.

It’s good to have that message every now and then.