Pittsburgh point guard Sean Miller, on a fast-break against Providence, could have passed the ball ahead to Demetreus Gore. How boring that would have been.
Gore could have scored, probably easily, from the left side. Instead, Miller delivered a no-look pass to the right to rumbling Jerome Lane. He caught it in stride past the 3-point line and barreled toward the basket, rising up with the ball in the right hand and finishing with one of the most famous dunks in college basketball history.
Lane shattered the backboard … and ESPN’s Bill Raftery, gathering his thoughts for several seconds, screamed out the now-famous four words, “Send it in, Jerome!”
That was 25 years ago today.
“A lot of people call it ‘The Dunk;’ it’s definitely ‘The Pass,’” Miller, the Arizona Wildcats head coach, said with a smile at a local news conference two years ago. “The dunk wouldn’t have happened if the pass didn’t happen.”
The pass, the dunk, the call, live on.
This week, ESPN deemed Raftery’s words the 10th-best call in sports. The New York Times was among several media outlets reminiscing today about the play.
Said Miller, “It’s an experience that very few will ever have.”