Cinderella was headed to the Sweet 16 in Birmingham until Georgetown's Don Reid improvised his own fairy-tale ending.
With the final chaotic seconds winding down, Reid grabbed an Allen Iverson airball and laid it in at the buzzer to give the Hoyas a 53-51 victory over upset-minded Weber State in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The final outcome sent Weber State home and Georgetown to Birmingham for the Southeast Regional semifinals Thursday night against North Carolina."One of the ingredients necessary to have in this tournament is luck," Georgetown Coach John Thompson said after an impromptu victory dance. "This time, we had luck and Don Reid."
No. 14 seed Weber State, which knocked out No. 3 Michigan State in the first round, played No. 6 Georgetown to a 51-51 standoff, and had leading scorer Ruben Nembhard on the free-throw line with 7.7 seconds to go. But Nembhard missed the front end of a one-and-one, Georgetown rebounded, and Reid's putback beat the buzzer.
"It's tough to end this way," said Weber State Coach Ron Abegglen, his voice cracking. "I guess we were not supposed to win, but I personally felt like we should have."
The seesaw game, in which neither team sank 40 percent of its shots from the field, boiled down to the final 7.7 seconds. And Weber State had the edge with Nembhard, a 72 percent free-throw shooter, on the line.
Thompson called timeout and gave his team a message.
"I told our players, `The rebound will kill you more than the shot,' " he said. "They had to box out."
Nembhard, a senior who had made seven-of-10 free-throw attempts up to that point, didn't anticipate that there would be a rebound. Still, despite scoring a game-high 19 points, he acknowledged everything wasn't right.
"I wasn't nervous or anything," he said. "But basically, I just wasn't feeling comfortable the whole night. I thought I wasn't shooting good from the free-throw line the entire night."
Abegglen had hoped for a foul call seconds earlier, when Reid swatted a Nembhard shot out of bounds.
"A two-shot foul would have been a lot easier than being in a pressure situtation with a one-and-one," Abegglen said. "That's a lot of pressure to put on a young man in a big game like that."
Nembhard's free-throw attempt bounced off the rim and Georgetown's Jerome Williams rebounded, then handed the ball to Iverson, setting up the game-winning sequence.
Ironically, the previous night, Reid, a 6-foot-8 senior, was watching a show on ESPN featuring memorable NCAA Tournament games. One of the clips was the 1983 NCAA Championship game when North Carolina State's Lorenzo Charles dunked in a Derek Whittenberg airball at the buzzer to give the Wolfpack the championship.
Reid never envisioned a similar scenario would unfold Sunday. But in case it did, he positioned himself in the right place.
As Iverson hurriedly was dribbling the ball upcourt, Reid kept his eyes glued to the eyes of the Hoyas' freshman pointguard.
"I was trying to stay on the opposite side of Allen," he said, "hoping that the rebound would come off the other side."
Iverson said his concern was to get the ball downcourt and shoot before time expired. Weber State's Lewis Lofton, whose sticky defense held Iverson to six-for-21 shooting, didn't make that an easy task.
"I knew they were going to give him the ball," Lofton said. "I guarded him real tough, made him throw up a bad shot."
Meanwhile, Kirk Smith, whose nine rebounds led Weber State, positioned himself far away from the basket, anticipating a long rebound.
"It was such a long shot, you expect it to come out a long ways," Abegglen said.
Instead, Iverson's shot came up way short. In one motion, Reid jumped, caught the ball and laid it in.
"I knew that I had to get the shot off," Reid said."I wasn't quite sure (it beat the buzzer) until the players started coming out on the court."
Replays showed Reid let go of the ball with one-tenth of a second remaining, and that the officials made the correct call.
"I knew it was close," Abegglen said. "But you know how I wanted them to call it."
The normally stoic Thompson, winner of 524 games in his career, was so excited afterward, he exhibited some fancy dancing steps on the sideline.
"I just did what I felt," Thompson said. "This wasn't any time to be restrained."
Abegglen, who lamented his team's lack of respect all week, said all the ingredients for Weber State to continue its Cinderella run were there.
"We had a lot of chances," he said.
The glass slipper just didn't fit.