Arkansas' BIGGEST shots

Basketball Insider Board
#1

I’m sure there are many, these are just the ones I remember the most. Huge moments where a player came up with an amazing shot to give us the win, or in one instance take us to overtime so we could win.

I tried to find video of each one and some of it is poor quality but I did find my top 5.

#1 Of course, its Scotty Thurman for three over Grant Hill to help secure us a national title in 1994.

#2 US Reed hits a 49 foot shot in 1981 to beat Louisville and send Arkansas to the Sweet Sixteen.

#3 Charles Ballentine helps lift Arkansas over Jordan and undefeated North Carolina in 1984.

#4 Lee Mayberry busts a deep 3 to send us to overtime and victory against Texas in Austin in the game made famous by Nolan Richardson walking off the court in 1990.

#5 Michael Qualls on the put back dunk to win the game in overtime against Kentucky in 2014. That put back dunk to win the game is akin to baseballs walk-off homerun. A thing of beauty. Yes I realize Kentucky got a final inbound heave, but only because the clock operators gave them like .02 seconds. Plus is beat the Squid. Always a bonus!!

#6 Okay I said five but I cannot leave off Devo Davis for his huge shot to beat Oral Roberts in the 2021 NCAA tournament. Big time play in a big time moment to send Arkansas to the Elite Eight for the first time in 26 years.

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#2

What about Thurman 94 against Duke?
I don’t notice you had Thurman #1! That’s the one. US Reed form Half court

#3

Pretty good selection. I’d add Boot vs. Notre Dame in the '78 third-place game, Moncrief at the buzzer in Lubbock to win the 1979 SWC regular season title, and another one I bet you can’t find video for.

We were playing A&M at Barnhill when they were pretty good ('81 maybe?). As I recall, we had two foul shots to win the game with about 5 seconds left. Missed one, made the other to tie the score. A&M inbounded the ball and raced upcourt; their guard (Dave Goff, I think) tried a halfcourt shot. U.S. slid under him and took the charge. Which was really a stupid play; if they’d called a block Goff would have had free throws for the win. But ref Lynn Shortnacy called him for running over Reed after releasing the shot, and U.S. hit the front of the 1-and-1 with :00 on the clock for the win. The Aggie players refused to talk to the media afterward; most comment I got was Rynn Wright saying “y’all got what you wanted” and moving rather menacingly toward us. Most of us got the heck out of the A&M locker room. And for a week afterward, the chant at Aggie basketball games was “beat the hell out of Lynn Shortnacy”.

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#4

Not sure what you didn’t see, I had:
#1 Thurman 1994 National Title over Duke
#2 US Reed 1981 over Louisville to advance to the Sweet Sixteen
#3 Ballentine to beat undefeated UNC and Jordan in 1984
#4 Lee Mayberry hits deep three to tie Texas in the Strollin Nolan game in 1990.
#5 Qualls dunks Kentucky into submission in 2014
#6 Devo Davis game winner over Oral Roberts to take us to the Sweet Sixteen 2021

#5

Good catch Swine, I had totally forgot that one. Getting old… memory is not what it once was.

#6

Here’s another good one involving the Aggies. Darrell Walker from the top of the key at the buzzer in G. Rollie White in 1982.

Also, as I recall, U.S. Reed hit about an 18-footer at the buzzer to beat Texas in Barnhill in '81, a few weeks before the halfcourt shot. So after the game in Austin, Abe Lemons, apparently rather snockered, staggered out of the Super Drum and said “I have seen that shot before!” The 18-footer in Barnhill was the one Abe meant.

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#7

That’s good stuff!

#8

I was still in college at UA then
Took my Dad to the game
Only college game he has ever attended

I literally thought Shelby Metcalf was going to die on the court

#9

Found the box score at hogstats.com. It was Feb. 12, 1980 (four years to the day before UNC at PB). And it was Dave Goff that U.S. stepped in front of. Final score was 45-44.

Three days previous, we had lost the longest game in UA basketball history, 3 OTs to Cougar High at Hofheinz.

I remembered Shortnacy being the ref, but the box says it was Denny Bishop.

#10

Boot made a big one at Lubbock at buzzer. May have been first win there as Raiders had not been in Swc long.

#11

Thought about that one too but I’ve never actually seen it.

Actually it was our first win in Lubbock and Tech had been in the league almost 20 years. We were 0-19 in the Bubble in Lubbock until Boot hit that shot, however long it was. Thanks to starting 0-19 on the road in that series, we’re only up to even (40-40) against Tech, with the most recent one being in the NCAA at Indy.

#12

In my old age, 20 is a young number. :sunglasses:

#13

Same here, but 0-19 is still a lot of L’s.

#14

Steven Hill had a last second shot to beat Tenn in the sec tourney to send us to the finals. That was a year a tornado hit the Georgia dome, so I had to watch the game from a chilis in Tenn instead of the Georgia dome.

#15

I was one of about 400 people in the arena when that happened. It was my first SEC Tournament to cover. I had Kentucky fans offering me hundreds of dollars outside Georgia Tech’s arena for my credential. That was a weird weekend.

#16

Hogasarus, that was HUGE because it got us an NCAA Tourney bid. We were on the bubble as I recall.

#17

I would nominate Scotty Thurman’s shot to beat Kentucky on Super Bowl Sunday to be considered somewhere. It was only a regular-season game, but it was probably the best game to be played at Bud Walton Arena.

#18

Oh yes, Matt, and Reggie Garrett hit the 50 footer right before half.

Edited so that history isn’t rewritten.

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#19

It was Reggie Garrett who hit the half-court shot. He and Dwight Stewart (in the Final Four vs. UNC) both had once-in-a-lifetime buzzer beaters that year in huge games.

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#20

Thanks for this votan. Probably a perfect list.

Aside: The Stewart 3/4 court heave is one of the craziest looking, and pleasing to watch, shots I think I’ve ever seen. The way he chunks it and the way it goes thru the net looks like something out of a video game.