Kala‘i Santos banked in a 74-foot shot at the buzzer as No. 2 Punahou rallied to edge No. 3 Saint Louis 59-58 on Wednesday night at McCabe Gymnasium.
A stunned crowd of about 500 watched as Punahou chipped away at a 13-point deficit in the second half. Saint Louis led most of the way, but got the ball back with no time outs left and 1.7 seconds to play.
Santos took an inbounds pass from Micah Ma‘a and immediately launched a set shot — not a throw — that banked home. He was rewarded moments later with a big kiss on the cheek from his girlfriend.
Punahou improved to 3-0 in ILH play. Saint Louis dropped to 2-1.
Saint Louis played more than well enough to win, but 13-for-23 shooting at the charity stripe was a factor. The Crusaders shot 51 percent from the field (20-for-39). Punahou shot just 36 percent from the field (15-for-42), but was 7-for-14 in the final quarter. The Buffanblu outrebounded Saint Louis 26-23.
Punahou shot 10-for-26 from the 3-point arc and did not have a turnover in the final 8 minutes.
To a man, the Buffanblu felt they were as lucky as they were deserving of their miraculous win.
“Saint Louis played a helluva game. We just executed and made our shots at the end,” Punahou’s Jordan Tanuvasa said. “Everyone came in off the bench and played well.”
hope someone captured video of that shot
http://www.hawaiiprepworld.com/boys-basketball/video-miracle-shot-lifts-punahou-to-win/
This should have never happened. Punahou hit a 3 point shot to go down 1 point. All STL had to do was walk off the court. Punahou had no time to stop the clock. And since there was less than 5 seconds on the game clock, STL did not have to inbounds the ball. This is a huge mental error. Coming out of the previous deadball or timeout, the STL coaches HAVE to tell their players not to foul on a 3 point shot (since it was a 4 point difference) and do not inbounds the ball. Let the ball drop and let the clock run out since Punahou was out of timeouts. The game would have and should have ended after that 3 pointer to put Punahou down 1 point. But it was a great shot.