Welcome to 2009-10 UB Men's Basketball Blog, written by senior shooting guard Sean Smiley

February 20, 2010

Stop Staring

I must have done something to please the basketball gods this weekend.

Up by three points with seven seconds left in regulation against St. Peter's College, I inbounded the ball against a full court press. With two timeouts left I threw a poor pass that was deflected and stolen, leading to a game-tying three-pointer by the Peacocks.

So we headed to overtime.

The game was back and forth from there; your regular barn-burner until the ball went out of bounds under our basket with 2.4 seconds left. After a time-out where coach drew up a play, we walked back onto the court.

Coming off a double screen I caught the ball in the corner and wanted to shoot but my defender was all over me. Knowing I had plenty of time (2.4 seconds is a long time believe it or not), I faked a shot and as my defender jumped to block it took a dribble left and shot.

The buzzer sounded as the ball arced through the air

...and then shot straight through the net. Game winner.

I had just gone from making a boneheaded inbounds pass (I should've called timeout) to hitting the game-winning shot in overtime.

Nothing like a nice emotional swing on a Saturday afternoon.

After post game pizza we road through New York City, past Times Square and across Madison Avenue; through the Holland Tunnel and another tunnel that I can't remember, before finally arriving at JFK international airport.

Where we will spend the next three and a half hours before our 11pm flight home.

We're flying JetBlue and I'm ready for the in-flight entertainment. TV's on the backs of every seat - doesn't get much better than that.

Except, on the way here when the captain turned off our TV's 20 seconds before the finish of an especially close Olympic Cross-Country Ski race.

Talk about a buzzkill.

Luckily curling is on in the terminal now - the US Women are cutting it close with Germany.

So it's goodbye New York City and hello Buffalo with a Bracketbuster win under our belt.