It happens once or twice a year, and whenever it does, it's hard not to smile. A shot is put up, appears to be arching directly toward the net, takes a bounce off the back iron and then lands squarely on the back stanchion, refusing to move.
The basketball season hasn't even kicked off yet, and we've already got our first stuck ball incident from a major event. At the 2011 State Farm Tournament of Champions during Thanksgiving weekend, the face off between Montgomery (Ala.) Carver High and Proviso (Ill.) East High featured this open jumper by Keith Carter, a budding senior prospect from Proviso East who was trying to pull his team into an early-game tie.
It didn't happen, though that had a lot more to do with a random bounce off the iron than it did with Carter's shot. The ball bounced directly off its first touch of the iron and landed squarely on the back of the rim, refusing to budge and forcing an alternating possession re-start, which gave the ball back to Carver.
Considering the fact that stuck balls are usually lodged between the rim and backboard or come from close range, Carter's ill-fated jumper was certainly the exception to the rule.
Will it be the last time we see a ball balance precariously on a rim this year? Probably not, but Carter's shot might have stayed up there the longest if it had been allowed to sit there unbothered.
Carver went on to conclude an impressive tournament with a buzzer-beating game winner to land the Alabama squad a 44-43 win against Peoria (Ill.) Washington High, but it's likely that the second most memorable shot from the team's trip to the Midwest was one that wasn't even taken by a Carver player.
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