Heroic Hoops
Amazing Shots Made by Gaucho Basketball Players
While UCSB’s 78-70 victory over UNLV’s national championship team in 1990 remains the most significant regular-season men’s basketball game at the Thunderdome, for sheer excitement, it would be hard to top last Saturday night’s double-overtime classic between the Gauchos and the Runnin’ Rebels. It was a roller-coaster ride of a game that took all sorts of crazy twists and turns before UNLV secured a 94-88 win.
How many times have you seen a player succeed in parlaying a purposely missed free throw into a two-point basket? UCSB’s Orlando Johnson pulled it off, following his own lobbed shot, stripping the ball away from a UNLV player to teammate Greg Somogyi, who laid the ball in as the buzzer sounded, sending the game into overtime.
Then there were the clutch shots in overtime, three free throws by UCSB’s James Nunnally, answered by Chace Stanback’s three-pointer that tied the score again, almost topped by Johnson’s 40-footer at the buzzer that hit the back of the rim. There were the two charging calls on Nunnally that wiped out Gaucho points — calls that were legitimate, but oh so painful to the loud crowd of 5,361.
