Buzzer Beater Gives Falcons Victory! Holmes has dominant night...

So how about that. After enduring heart-breaking, rip your heart out of your chest losses last season, BG turned the tables on the Detroit Titans, as Richaun Holmes picked a pass up when BG had 2.2 seconds to score, down 1. You can watch the play above...as many times as you want.

You'd be doing yourself a disservice, though, if you only thought about Richaun Holmes as it related to the last play of the game, as good as it was.  Holmes had an incredible night--I'd be hard pressed to remember when the Falcons enjoyed a dominant effort of this caliber.  Holmes scored 26 points on 10 of 12 shooting, grabbed 18 rebounds and had 5 blocks, including a block of UD super FR Paris Bass with :45 and BG leading by 1.

I don't remember the last time a Falcon had 18 rebounds.  It is tied for the 4th highest total so far in D1 this year.  Richaun has been a good player most of the time and a very good player some of the time, but in this game he was simply great.  He was as dominant as any player Falcon in recent memory and the buzzer beater was just the closing act.

The end was pretty confusing, as basketball games tend to be.  I was watching the WADL telecast (featuring former NBAer Earl Cuerton).  BG was inbounding on its own baseline with 2.4 seconds left down 1.  They didn't put a guy on the ball and Henderson had a hard time getting the ball in.  When he did, it was stolen and then lost OB right away.

They went to the replay and decided there was 2.2 seconds left, which seemed to the Detroit announcers--and Ray McCallum after the game--that there should have been less than that.  Anyway, it was 2.2.  BG went to inbound the ball and they put the 6'9" Bass on the ball and he seemed to really both Henderson, which is not surprising.  BG called time and when they set it up again they had Bass off the ball for reasons I will not understand and that's when they hit Holmes and he made the video you see above.

When I watched the replay, it didn't look that obvious to me and there might be a rule related to how much the clock runs off on something like that.  Either way, nothing was stopping them from defending the pass.

Detroit was the first team to score over 60 against BG this year.  This is also the second straight game where BG won the game despite being outshot.  UDM was 45/39 while BG was 39/29.  However, BG created 4 extra possessions by having only 10 turnovers and created a few more by a decisive margin on the offensive boards and that was enough to turn the game.  BG had 1.0 per possesion for the 4th straight game and gave up .98, which is their least efficient defensive performance of the season.

College Basketball

Individually, beyond Holmes, there were no other double figures scorers.  Austin and Clarke each had 9 points and Dickerson had 6 rebounds.  In all, 10 Falcons played and 8 scored.  Chauncey Orr did not play with back problems.

The 4-0 Falcons will return to the court on Wednesday to play Western Kentucky in Bowling Green KY.  Let us hope that we have a better trip than the football team did.