Just wanted to get something up here quick after a wild one I'm going to be writing about for awhile. Please remember that while I take way too long breaks from this blog, I write quite a bit over at newbritainherald.com (and in the paper itself, but I can't link to that here.)
Doing a full man-to-man feels wrong tonight since, despite numerous contributions, this game was about one man and one shot.
Howie Dickenman told Kyle Vinales to make something happen. The sophomore sure did, making a who knows how many-footer in the final seconds to give Central its first win over the Bobcats in nine tries.
When it happened, I turned tot he person next to me on press row and said "that might be the worst shot I've ever seen."
His reply: "It went in, didn't it?"
Vinales had been struggling all night, but what makes him so exciting (and so tough) is that he doesn't worry about it. The last 10 shots, makes or misses, have no baring on his confidence about the next one he puts up. He thinks it's going in.
He's right a lot, and this one proved the rest of us wrong.
So I thought I'd give you a couple of punchlines from Vinales, who was in as rare a form after the game as he was at the end of it.
"I thought it was going in," he said with a smile.
When asked what the rim looked like from 28 feet away, he said "the ocean."
"He told me to make something happen," Vinales said, referring to Dickenman. "He told me to score, so I did."
And my favorite, after I asked him if he realized how far away he was when he took the shot, he said:
"No. After I shot it I said, 'damn, that was kind of far'. But it was a good choice I guess."
That might be debatable, but the result was not.
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