The Best NCAA Tournament Game I Ever Saw: Scottie Reynolds’ floater lives on

Scottie Reynolds is most often asked one of two things. First, how did he not make it to the NBA? It’s an impossible question to which he usually replies, “I don’t know. You’re asking the wrong guy.” Once that has been addressed, he’s asked about the singular moment that’s followed his every step since March 28, 2009.

“It just happened to be me,” he says.

Reynolds sounds different. Older. Cultured. Back in 2009, he was the kid streaking down the sideline at Boston’s TD Banknorth Garden, head on a swivel through a thicket of Pittsburgh defenders, four dribbles matching his stride. I was sitting sideline, mouth agape. The shot he lofted over 6-foot-6 Gilbert Brown hung in midair and lives on in time. Villanova, back then, was a good program trying to recapture its glory days. Its coach, 47-year-old Jay Wright, had jet-black hair and fancy suits that everyone still made a big deal of. The shot tossed by Reynolds eventually fell, slipping through the net and changing everything.

It was the first time in my writing career covering such a moment. I was 26, infinitely clueless, still more of a bartender than a sportswriter. My paychecks came from The Bulletin, a now-defunct reincarnation of The Philadelphia Bulletin (1847-1982), once the country’s largest evening paper. The slogan for the original paper was, “In Philadelphia, nearly everybody reads The Bulletin.” The version I worked for — well, that was decidedly not the case. No one read it, which, in hindsight, was for the best.

The shot by Reynolds is now legend. Also, an easy choice as the best NCAA Tournament game I’ve ever seen. That night in Boston was a thrill ride, no seatbelts. Thirteen lead changes, eight ties. Noise see-sawing through a split house. Two badass old-school Big East teams. One hero. The game was so much more than that, though. In this business, writers are often propelled by their proximity to special teams or certain players or certain times in history. For me, the chance to cover Villanova-Pittsburgh in the 2009 Elite Eight reinforced the idea that I had no choice but to do this job for the rest of my life. It also gave me the chance to further cover a player such as Reynolds — deep, complicated, often misunderstood — teaching me that nothing comes easily when writing about the human condition.

Reynolds is 32 now, speaking by phone from an apartment in Strasbourg, France. He has played in pro leagues all over the world. Turkey, Italy, Israel, Czech Republic, Japan, Russia, Croatia, Slovenia, Greece. (Yes, he’s healthy and safe amid the ongoing global pandemic.) He says this happens every year around this time — calls coming to ask about his heart-stopping, tear-dropping buzzer-beater. To this day, he doesn’t take credit for the play.

First, he notes, you have to remember Reggie Redding. A junior, he threw an errant length-of-the-court inbound to a leaking Dante Cunningham with Villanova leading by two and 10.6 seconds remaining. A brutal turnover. Pittsburgh’s LeVance Fields turned the mistake into two free throws, tying the game at 76. Redding didn’t let that define him, though. When it came time for redemption, he threw a 35-foot inbound pass to Cunningham that sprang Reynolds’ runout.

Plus, Reynolds adds, what can you say about Cunningham? He did what seniors do. Caught the ball, flipped it to Reynolds in stride. No hesitation. A lesser player would’ve botched it. Not Cunningham.

With that, off went Reynolds, three Pitt Panthers giving chase. “They’re in trouble!” Bill Raftery yelled on the CBS broadcast, seeing the moment develop. Reynolds dodged a flat-footed DeJuan Blair at the free-throw line. The 265-pound center could only swipe at the mouse going by. Reynolds then encountered Brown in the middle of the lane, arms straight in the air. Not exactly a leaper, Reynolds more or less jumped into Brown, flipping the ball into the air. It curled around the rim and dropped in, setting off a mad dash down the floor. Villanova 78, Pitt 76.

Reynolds reached the far basket before his teammates engulfed him. Assistant coach Doug West arrived, peeling everyone off him, yelling that the game wasn’t over. The officials put 0.5 seconds on the clock, enough time for Fields, a Pitt senior, to launch a desperation heave off the backboard from 70 feet out. Villanova players rushed onto the floor all over again. Fields turned and threw his headband into the stands. Pitt, the No. 1 seed in the East Region, saw its season end with a 31-5 record. For the Panthers, it wasn’t supposed to end this way. This was supposed to be the team that ended the school’s Final Four drought — one dating to 1941.

Instead, it was Villanova returning to the Final Four for the first time since 1985. It’s hard to imagine where the program would be today without the 2009 team. Double-digit increases were seen in annual donor support for the program the next year, resulting in the highest-ever revenue base for the athletic department. As its fellow private, Catholic school athletic departments tried to keep up with the arms race in college sports, Villanova thrived. Wright built his tenure with players such as Randy Foye, Allan Ray, Kyle Lowry and Mike Nardi reaching the 2006 regional finals. It was the ’09 team that brought the program to another level. Years later, upon that foundation, Villanova claimed a pair of national titles in 2016 and ’18.

“Of course, Kris Jenkins’ shot was the best in history,” says Dwayne Anderson, now Villanova’s director of basketball relations, “but Scottie’s shot came first.”

As guys like Anderson point to Reynolds, he points back at them. It was Anderson who changed the course of the night in Boston. Pitt led, 67-63, with 3:18 left, and following a Villanova turnover, the game felt firmly in the Panthers’ grip. Wright called for a halfcourt trap on the ensuing play, though, leading to Anderson ripping the ball away from Jermaine Dixon and driving 45 feet for a game-swinging and-one layup.

“Anytime a fan brings up the game, that comes up all the time,” Anderson says.

If not Reynolds, Anderson would’ve been the hero. He says his biggest memory from that night is Wright steaming into the halftime locker room, skipping his normal meeting period with assistants, and tearing into him for a lack of aggression. The senior scored only one first-half point. By night’s end, he had a team-high 17.

Or maybe Cunningham would’ve been the hero. He not only scored 14 points, but also forced Pitt’s big, brute frontcourt to overextend itself, stepping out and hitting his array of face-up midrange jumpers.

Or maybe it would’ve been Shane Clark. The team’s seventh-leading scorer, he made three first-half 3s, hitting from both corners and the top of the key. Near midnight that evening, standing in a back hallway outside the locker room, surrounded by us Philly media members, faces he’d known for years, Wright was asked if Clark’s contributions were part of the game plan. He cocked an eyebrow, laughed and responded, “No, no, no.”

Add ’em together, along with Redding, Corey Fisher and Corey Stokes, and Villanova stole fire from the sky in 2009.

That’s a long time ago now. What sticks out all these years later was how Reynolds handled the rush of attention. Everyone glommed onto his story, locally and nationally, including me. It was a well-known tale then that he was given up for adoption by his mother two days after being born in 1987 and adopted. His origin story became known in 2005 when, as a high school junior at Herndon (Va.) High School, he arrived at halftime of a game to find his team losing 56-33. A devout Christian, Reynolds was late because he was attending weekly Bible study. He checked in for the second half and scored 30 points in 16 minutes, nearly bringing Herndon all the way back. Fans and media swarmed him after the game, only to find him hugging two white parents, Rick and Pam Reynolds. The story spread. When Reynolds was 19, he learned who his birth mother was, but opted not to track her down. That final nugget was too much for media members to bear and everyone needed to write their version.

It all spilled over the brim in the 2009 tournament.

I still remember Reynolds sitting at his locker that night in Boston, game ball cradled in his arms, being asked about, of all things, whether he would someday track down his birth mom. His restraint and patience rose to impossible levels, taking it all in stride, answering the questions, retelling his story. He did the same a day or two later when all the same queries were repeated during on-campus interviews. Then again a few days later at the Final Four in Detroit. It was an early lesson in how one’s story can go from personal to processed.

Speaking by phone this week, Reynolds said the whole experience feels “so long ago.” He has been all over the world since then. Yes, he has never played a game in the NBA and he’s one of two AP first-team All-Americans to go undrafted (Cincinnati’s Sean Kilpatrick is the other), but he’s at peace. He looks for the right words and says, “I look at myself 10, 11 years ago and it’s unrecognizable. The things I believe in and the way I understand cultures and the way people think — I couldn’t imagine understanding the things I know now. I’m so thankful and happy.”

He’s the old guy. Younger American players who land overseas seek him out before games and practices. They tell him he’s a legend. They ask about the Pitt game. They ask about the play.

They might not get the answer they expect. With age comes perspective and Reynolds has plenty of it. When he looks back on the play, he can’t help but contemplate the alternatives. “If it doesn’t happen, and Pitt won, how much does that change for everyone?” he asks. “That’s the way the game is. It’s crazy to look at it that way.”

The ultimate irony in all of this is the play Villanova ran to beat Pitt was rarely executed in practice. The starters, wearing blue, would run it against the reserves, wearing white. Something would usually go wrong. Before climbing the ladder to cut down the nets, Cunningham grabbed Reynolds by the shoulders and yelled, “That never works in practice!”

These are the things you learn along the way. All that work, the times it didn’t work, are what led to the time it did. Reynolds didn’t get lucky, but those who watched him did.