Riley’s 3 was a miracle shot more than forcing overtime

ATLANTA — The most outstanding player of the Southeastern Conference tournament won’t play a single minute in today’s championship game. Nor did he ever see a second of the Alexander Memorial Coliseum court for Saturday’s semifinals.

But when Alabama senior Mykal Riley hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer to force overtime in the Tide’s eventual loss to Mississippi State on Friday night, he did something much more important than prolong a basketball game.

He saved lives.

Maybe lots of lives.

Because Riley forced overtime, as many as a couple of thousand people remained in their Georgia Dome seats rather than venture out into the unusually still and sticky night. And because they weren’t outside, they weren’t hurled into space by 135-mph winds or showered with sheets of metal or shards of glass when a tornado shook the Dome less than 10 minutes after Riley’s rainbow.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” he said Saturday as he headed home to Pine Bluff, Ark., for spring break. “I couldn’t sleep last night because I kept thinking about it. A lot of people could be dead if that hadn’t happened.”

No one much thought that way at the time. The twister passed so quickly. Five minutes after it blew through, the air was again still and the sky black. The nuts and bolts quit falling from the Georgia Dome ceiling. A lot of folks symbolically wiped their brows, broke into a relieved smile and said, “Whew, we dodged one.’”

And in the most important of areas — human life — we did. At least Friday night. Sadly, Saturday’s tornadoes claimed at two lives. A tornado watch continued to threaten much of the Peach State until early this morning.

But the toll to property was also enormous, an estimated $150 million or more. Only in the dawn’s early light of Saturday did the wreckage fully depress. A roof and floors collapsed at the historic Cotton Mill lofts. The bungalows of Cabbagetown were blown apart. Two holes measuring at least 12 feet across were visible by air on the roof of the World Congress Center, which appeared to bear the brunt of the F2 twister’s wrath.

“I have not seen anything like this before,” said Atlanta fire battalion chief Gerry Rusinski. “It looked like 9-11 when we pulled up.”

We should all hope nothing in our lifetimes ever again resembles 9-11 or Hurricane Katrina. But this was bad enough to leave a six-mile path of destruction through the Big Peach’s downtown, 10,000 Georgia residents without power and a Georgia Dome put out of commission by the storm, which forced the SEC to move its tournament to Georgia Tech’s place.

And in the days and weeks to come, there will surely be much discussion about that move. Some will say it might have been better to cancel the event than play it before a few hundred fans from each competing team, a necessity brought about by Alexander’s seating capacity (less than 9,500).

Even Southeastern Conference associate commissioner Charles Bloom admitted Saturday, “At one point (late Friday night), after we’d seen some of the footage on TV, someone said something like, ‘Why are we worrying about basketball?’”

And it wasn’t exactly basketball the way we’ve come to know it in the SEC, with our mega-arenas filled to the rim.

Describing the atmosphere inside Alexander Memorial on Saturday afternoon, Georgia guard Zac Swansey said, “(It’s like) in high school when you play teams that aren’t as good as you and you go to their place and there aren’t many people.”

In this case, roughly 1,400 people watched Swansey’s late 3-pointer knock out Kentucky 60-56 in overtime in the tourney’s final quarterfinal game. There weren’t many more people for Tennessee’s semifinal game against Arkansas or Mississippi State’s tussle with Georgia.

But UK coach Billy Gillispie also eloquently framed the argument for playing.

“Mother Nature came and visited us and put us in a tough situation,” Billy G said after the Cats’ loss. “Usually in these situations, finances usually dictate what happens. It’s obvious that they’re going to have a mess trying to deal with tickets and refunds and those kind of things. But they put competition before a financial decision and I think they should be commended for that.”

Mississippi State coach Rick Stansbury wasn’t in much of a mood to commend anyone on his team when they let Riley hit that 3-pointer rather than foul him. He pounded the scorer’s table and screamed a bunch of words that can’t be printed in this newspaper.

But on Saturday morning he saw it differently.

“I guess that shot was meant to be,” he said as he put his arm around one of his young sons. “I didn’t understand it at the time. But what a fortunate thing.”

Said Riley: “I keep thinking about how the ball just rolled in. I believe God had his hand in that to protect the people who were in the Dome. It was supposed to happen so that no one would be hurt.”

Or worse.

Much worse.