Hoosiers Notebook: Anatomy of a buzzer-beater breakdown
By CHRIS GOFF
ISL Correspondent
Luckiest man of the season so far? Tyler Griffey is leading the pack after the free-and-easy layup he stuffed into the final nine-tenths of a second to upset top-ranked Indiana Thursday.
On an inbounds play, the Illinois backup broke right to the basket and scored with the closest defender 10 feet away.
For Griffey and the Fighting Illini, the play equaled pure elation. For the Hoosiers? Outright embarrassment.
Let’s reset the scene. With the score 72-72, Brandon Paul stood ready to inbound the ball from deep in the right corner. Victor Oladipo, Indiana’s best defender, guarded the pass. Griffey, initially checked in man-to-man by Christian Watford, flashed wide-open to the basket, caught the ball just inside the charge circle off one bounce and released it from his right hand with 0.6 seconds remaining. A smooch off the backboard and through the net, and fans rushed the court to celebrate Illinois’ third victory in school history over a No. 1 team.
How in the world did that happen?
Glad you asked. Let’s take it one step at a time.
Indiana coach Tom Crean said afterward that he did not call time out before the possession because he worried about counterpart John Groce designing a lob play.
So with no special instruction, four Hoosiers reverted to man-to-man defense against four Illini. Watford had Griffey, Yogi Ferrell took D.J. Richardson, Will Sheehey guarded Joseph Bertrand in the left corner, and Cody Zeller checked Sam McLaurin.
From the time Paul took the ball from the official to the pass being released, three seconds elapsed. The movement of players – or lack thereof – during those three seconds created the ultimate outcome.
Bertrand and Sheehey, distant and irrelevant, were the only guys not involved. The other six players would at one point end up in a giant mush on the right wing.
It started with Griffey, coming to his right out of the paint, and Richardson, drifting back and to his left, converging until they were side-by-side at the 3-point line. Watford, fearing that Griffey was about to screen Ferrell, ducked in front of Griffey to try to deny an angle for Richardson to catch a pass behind the arc. Ferrell, noticing Watford’s action, hung back, seemingly with the intention of picking up Griffey.
So far, so good for Indiana, but here’s where things go disastrously wrong.
Richardson backpedals to a spot nearly 30 feet from the hoop, and Watford, instead of staying with Richardson, turns back to Griffey. Keep that decision in mind, because it is perhaps the fulcrum of this entire sequence. Watford is now facing Griffey shoulder-to-shoulder, with Griffey just inside the line and facing the right sideline. Ferrell is also brushing up against Griffey, putting a defender directly between Griffey and the basket.
While all that was going on, McLaurin, initially stationed in the right corner, was moving toward the action. As McLaurin approaches the three-man bear hug that is Watford, Griffey and Ferrell, Richardson quits backpedaling and cuts sharply along the sideline toward Paul, the inbounder.
Richardson, who had scored 15 points on 6-for-9 shooting after halftime, seemed to be the intended receiver on this decisive set. At least, when Richardson makes his move, Watford, Ferrell and Zeller all clearly become convinced that he is, and their snap judgment is enough to cause the three of them to lose Griffey.
Ferrell recognizes that Indiana now has two defenders on Griffey and none on Richardson. Watford, with his back turned, has no idea where Richardson is. In fact, Watford turns his head left to check on Richardson as Richardson is cutting behind Watford to Watford’s right. So, if anyone’s going to chase down Richardson, Ferrell knows he has to be the one to do it.
In case you were wondering, Ferrell never gets to Richardson. McLaurin cuts off Ferrell’s window with a screen, trapping the tiny point guard between McLaurin and Griffey. Watford sees this unfolding and, in an action reflective of both the realization of his earlier mistake in leaving Richardson and the sudden conviction that Richardson is the target, quickly pursues and tries to make up ground on Richardson.
OK. Let’s take a water break and reset the situation. Bertrand and Sheehey are off eating popcorn on a distant island. Richardson is leading Watford on a wild goose chase. And Ferrell is rubbing McLaurin’s belly.
So the only players left are Zeller and Griffey. Remember, Zeller was dragged toward the pile-up because his man was McLaurin.
Griffey is now out of jail. As Ferrell and Watford made separate decisions to run after Richardson, Griffey perhaps assured their choices by taking a clever, half-step deke in that direction. But as soon as that is done, Griffey veers left and cuts around Zeller’s left side and down the lane to make history.
The front of Zeller’s body is facing the right sideline the whole way, and his gaze never leaves Richardson. Zeller thinks the play is happening in front of him. In fact, it is about to happen behind him. In a split-second but fatal miscalculation, Zeller never thinks of Griffey.
And so that is the tale of how Griffey went from being essentially double-teamed to completely unaccounted for on the same play.
A wonderfully drawn-up play, mind you, but one that will forever be Griffey’s personal four-leaf clover.
