Tyler Thornton's Miracle In Maui: A Fan's Take.

If you're a Duke Basketball fan worth your salt, you were watching the championship game of the 2011 Maui Invitational Wednesday night. If you're over the age of 65, live on the East Coast, and were in bed asleep when this all went down, (this includes my grandparents...I was at their house watching the game) then you're excused. But if you didn't see the game, you missed a genuinely joyous moment of Duke Basketball. We were down one with about 1:10 to go and looking to run some sort of set to get a good look at a bucket, when suddenly Tyler Thornton essentially lost consciousness.
Bill Simmons, one of my favorite sports writers, has a classification of players he calls "irrational confidence" guys and plays he calls "irrational confidence" plays. Take for example Jason "The Jet" Terry's 2011 NBA Finals performance. It certainly goes down as one of the greatest irrational confidence performances in NBA playoff history. He hit 2-3 HUGE shots a game. This is the Jason Terry I remember "leading" those terrible Hawks teams from the late 90's/early 00's...our one notable player. All I remember were his ridiculously high socks, and now he's helping the Mavs to a title with clutch shooting. Anyway, in the last 1:10 of the game Wednesday night, Tyler Thornton knocked down two of the greatest irrational confidence shots in Duke history. And it was absolutely blissful. When he knocked down the first three at 1:10 to put us up by 2, I didn't even have time to get angry and think "why the HECK is HE taking that shot" the way I generally do whenever a Plumlee puts a shot up. It had gone down before I had time to process it. Honestly, for some reason, part of me knew he was gonna make it. He shot that three like he had done it countless times before. He had NEVER done it before.
Next thing I knew Tyshawn Taylor was dribbling the ball off his foot and out of bounds for something like his eleventh turnover of the game, and we had the ball back looking to ice it. Who do we go to? Seth of course. But wait. Seth is double-teamed! He's trapped....oh CRAP! there are 3 seconds left on the shot clock...
The next few moments brought to many Dukies, including my girlfriend, "the most joy I've experienced with regards to Duke BBall since the National Championship." Seth magically found Thornton with a pass (by the way, I've watched it many times, and Seth did NOT walk), and Tyler, pinned against the sideline, flailed his legs like Scheyer used to do on every shot and from the hip launched a three to the skies. I don't know about you, but I KNEW that thing was going down. Somehow, some way, it looked perfect once it had left his hand. Sure enough it hit only nylon, and the bench went HAM. I went HAM. I beat my chest several times like an ape, let out a series of strange gasping noises (didn't want to wake folks up) and swelled with happiness and joy. I would have done anything to have been sitting next to Josh Hairston on the bench. I think it may have been the greatest moment of his life.

I work for Men's Basketball in the video office. The program is run like some hybrid of a fortune 500 company and a military squadron. But in those 3 or 4 seconds after that shot went down, all professionalism among the coaching staff went out the window. Those guys looked ecstatic. And it was wonderful. I have never, ever, seen Coach K unable to contain his smile in a post game interview like that before.
What I think all of this means is there couldn't have been a better guy to nail those shots than Thornton. He's a quiet, hard worker who earns his minutes with defensive swagger and determination. In Maui he finally had his shining moment, and it was well deserved.
I'm enjoying watching this team immensely. The combination of their youthful energy and fearlessness makes each game interesting (read: too close for comfort) and yet sometimes trying to exceed expectations is more fun than trying to live up to them. Go Tyler Thornton, Go Blue Devils. You bring joy to my life. Let's get after Ohio State on Tuesday.