The Shot Heard Round The World

"We're gonna win," Krzyzewski told his team right away. Part of this was the obligatory bravado of a West Point man; cadets aren't taught to say "Here goes nothing." But part of it reflected that theory about basketball games being won and lost while time is out. Those 2.1 seconds wouldn't start ticking away until the ball was touched inbounds. A pass could travel 70, 80, even 90 feet with the clock as yet unstarted. The Blue Devils might have twice lost ground during dead balls, but Krzyzewski was going to do his best now to make up for it.

The play called for Grant Hill to throw the ball three quarters of the court. But Krzyzewski needed to know if Hill had heard him. "Grant, can you make the pass?"

"Yeah, Coach," Hill said. "I can do it."

Laettner was to come up from the left corner to the foul line, where he would create the best shot possible, provided he could get the ball. "Can you catch it?" Krzyzewski asked Laettner.

Laettner nodded yes.

As Hill prepared to inbound the ball, he thought back to one of the two games that Duke had lost that season. At Wake Forest he had been in virtually the same situation but had a defender in front of him. His heave screwballed toward the sideline, drawing Laettner out-of-bounds. This time Hill wanted only to give Laettner a chance to do something with the ball. This time, he noticed right away, there was no defender obstructing his view downcourt.

Pitino and his staff had spent most of the timeout in debate: Should we put a man on the ball? In much the same way that Hill ruminated on the Wake Forest game, the Kentucky staff was haunted by a precedent of its own. Assistants Billy Donovan and Herb Sendek, the first as a player and the second as a coach, had been with Pitino at Providence six years earlier, when the Friars held a two-point lead against St. John's in a similar situation. They failed to defend the inbounder, who found Redman star Walter Berry in the forecourt. Berry got off an awkward shot, but he drew a foul and made two free throws that sent the game into overtime, and the Friars lost. Pitino vowed then never again to fail to put a man on the ball.

But these were special circumstances. Gimel Martinez, Kentucky's 6'8" starting center, had fouled out. So had the 6'8" Mashburn. Two 6'9" Wildcats, Timberlake and Andre Riddick, were freshmen, and therefore Pitino didn't consider them options. That left the 6'7" Feldhaus and the 6'7" Pelphrey. "If we put Pelphrey or Feldhaus on the ball, the other has to play Laettner one-on-one," Pitino says now, noting that the Duke star goes 6'11" and 250 pounds. "We were afraid he could catch a pass and simply bull his way to the basket." Pitino decided this was no time to honor old vows, however grounded in hard experience they may have been. He simply couldn't justify deploying one of his two remaining excuses for a big man 90 feet from the one receptacle down which Kentucky's lead could get flushed.

It was settled. Feldhaus would match up with Laettner. Pelphrey would play centerfield, free safety—whatever.

With much to do and only seconds in which to do it, it is human nature to press, for fear you'll run out of time. That pressing feeling, alas, tends to assure that you'll use what little time you do have inefficiently. Yet here the Blue Devils executed as if they hadn't given time a second thought.