Francisco Garcia and the Louisville Cardinals must be pretty nimble.
They had to be in order to step around the several thousand jaws that dropped to the floor in the Bradley Center after Marquette blew an 11-point lead in the final minutes Thursday.
With the score knotted at 61 and 2.6 seconds on the clock, Garcia dribbled the ball up court and nailed a long three-point shot to sneak his team out of Milwaukee with a 64-61 victory.
But as impressive as that play was, the building had already been turned into a dental student's dream about a minute before, when a bizarre sequence of foul calls erased what had been a four-point lead for Marquette and set the stage for Garcia's game-killer.
With 1:37 on the game clock and his team up, 61-57, junior Joe Chapman fouled Louisville's Larry O'Bannon, who went to the line for the one and one.
This is where things got hazy.
As O'Bannon was taking — and making — his first free throw, freshman Ryan Amoroso knocked Otis George to the ground while jockeying for the non-existent rebound. The referees called Amoroso for the foul, and after a few confused minutes, George found himself lined up behind O'Bannon to take his hacks at the line.
O'Bannon knocked down his second shot — cutting the differential to two — and George stepped up for a two-shot attempt because Amoroso's foul had put Louisville in the double bonus.
George made them both, and without another second ticking off the clock, Marquette's lead had evaporated.
"The call at the end of the game with the push-off was costly. I didn't see it at the beginning but I looked at it when I got to the locker room. It looked like the right call," head coach Tom Crean said. "It's unfortunate. But Ryan, he'll live to fight another day for us, because he'll be a very good player here.
"It shifted the momentum right back to them. It was the right call."
Marquette was unable to score on its next possession, as it had been for the previous five minutes. A missed layup by senior Travis Diener and a missed three point shot by Chapman comprised the Golden Eagles' attempts to reclaim the lead before Garcia dropped the hammer.
"I was supposedly the best player on the floor. I should be able to make layups," Diener said. "I didn't do that tonight. Our guys fought hard. It was a game we should've won. But they made more plays.
"I got the layups, I just missed them."
After Garcia's dramatic shot, Marquette was able to inbound the ball on a long bounce pass to Diener, who missed a desperation running three at the buzzer.
"It was probably the best shot we could've got," Diener said. "It was a wide open shot. I just missed it, missed it bad. Story of the night."
The turn of events was especially shocking given that Marquette had been leading the No. 12 Cardinals for most of the second half, ballooning its advantage to 11 with 5:38 to go. And although Diener went 2-for-16 shooting, he dished out 11 assists and helped the Golden Eagles play well enough to win.
Marquette had been hanging tough with Louisville all night in a game that was much different from the teams' last meeting, when the Cardinals routed the Golden Eagles, 99-52, at Freedom Hall Jan. 26.
But then the floor dropped out and Louisville went on a 14-0 run following Steve Novak's three-pointer with 5:38 on the clock.
"We learned that, without a doubt, in our mind, we can play with them toe to toe when we're doing the right things," Crean said.
This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on Feb. 22 2005.