Dec. 20, 2007

Box Score

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Trailing 64-62 with .04 remaining on the clock, Samford's Travis Peterson nailed a 27-foot, game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer to lift the Bulldogs to a "miraculous" 65-64 victory against the Murray State Racers at the Pete Hanna Center.

In the win, Samford (5-5, 2-1 Ohio Valley Conference) scored seven points in the final 39 seconds of play to record the thrilling come-from-behind victory.

With Murray State (5-4, 2-2 OVC) leading 62-58 with 39 seconds remaining in the game, the Bulldogs' Trey Montgomery put the punctuation mark on the best performance of his collegiate career with a clutch four-point play from the corner to tie the game at 62-62.

On the tying score, senior Joe Ross Merritt found Montgomery in the left corner of the court with the shot clock running down. Montgomery pivoted, faded away and drained the deep 3-pointer despite being fouled on the wrist by Danero Thomas.

With the ensuing free throw, Montgomery tied the game at 62-62 and increased his career-high in scoring to 23 points. The Bulldogs' sophomore guard from Destrehan, La., was 8-for-12 from the field and a perfect 6-of-6 from the charity stripe, including three key free throws down the stretch.

On the next possession, Murray State milked the clock and called timeout with 13 seconds left.

The Racers then ran a play for senior guard Bruce Carter who drew a questionable blocking call on Travis Peterson with only two seconds remaining. Carter, a native of Detroit, Mich., knocked down both free throws and Samford called timeout trailing 64-62.

The Bulldogs' Josh Bedwell took the ball out of bounds with two seconds left and heaved a deep pass to midcourt where Carter intercepted the ball and flipped it towards the referee near the sideline thinking that the clock expired. With time still running, the official stepped to the side and the ball bounced on the out-of-bounds line with .04 seconds remaining.

On the final possession, Bedwell once against took the ball out of bounds, this time eight feet behind the half-court line on the far sideline. He pump-faked towards the middle of the court then rifled a pass to Peterson on the right flank 27 feet from the basket.

Peterson caught the ball in stride and in one motion fired off the shot in front of a Racer defender to win the game for the Bulldogs 65-64.

Peterson's buzzer-beating 3-pointer was his only 3-point field goal of the game, but actually wasn't a buzzer-beater, because the referee forgot to start the clock on his waist-band timer, which is part of the Precision Time clocking system that all Division I officials use.

Immediately after Peterson drained the game-winning 3-pointer, head official Jeb Hartness and his crew huddled for approximately three minutes and eventually deemed the basket good.

"In all my years of coaching, I've never seen an ending like that," said Samford head coach Jimmy Tillette. "I had no clue what the officials were going to do. They couldn't put .04 back on the clock and tell us to play it again, so they called it the only way they could call it."

Peterson finished with 15 points and was 6-of-8 from the floor. He also pulled down five rebounds and handed out two assists.

"That final play is something that we work on every week in practice," said Peterson. "I probably only make it two times out of 10, but tonight it went in. Right when I let it go, it felt good and went in, and I didn't even know that clock hadn't started. One of the officials called it good, so I guess they had to have evidence that it wasn't."

Thursday's buzzer-beater was the second-straight for Samford, but its first as a winner. On Tuesday, Southeast Missouri's Jimmy Drew connected on a last-second 3-pointer to upend the Bulldogs at home 63-62.

Similar to Tuesday's game, Samford jumped out to an early lead and held a 38-27 advantage over Murray State at halftime.

The Bulldogs shot 65 percent from the field in the opening period and Montgomery led all scorers with 11 points. Sophomore Bryan Friday added eight points in the first half and grabbed three rebounds.

Samford's Jim Griffin finished with a game-high and career-high seven rebounds and added five points. The Bulldogs' hard-nosed sophomore from Chicago played 32 minutes and also handed out three assists.

"I feel like we're getting better," Tillette said. "Our younger players are getting better and we still have a long way to go. This was a great win for us, and it was definitely unfortunate for Murray, just like it was unfortunate for us the other night against Southeast Missouri."

Murray State chipped away at Samford's lead in the second half behind the play of Kevin Thomas, Carter and Decatur-native Tyler Holloway.

Holloway led the Racers with 14 points and was a near-perfect 5-of-6 from the field. Carter scored 12 points in only 24 minutes of playing time and Thomas tallied 10 points and a game-high six assists.

The Samford University basketball team will take the next nine days off for the Christmas holidays before returning to competitive action Dec. 29 on the road against the 15th-ranked Clemson Tigers. The year-ending non-conference matchup will be played at Clemson's Littlejohn Coliseum.