It's Déjà Vu on the Basketball Court, and ESPN Notices (Again)

Another buzzer-beater by Alyna Baharozian ’18 has caught the attention of ESPN. On Saturday, February 24, Alyna sunk a near replica of a play that ESPN had featured among SportsCenter’s Top Plays in 2016. Then and now, the ball dropped into the hoop just in time to clinch a final-second victory over rival St. Mark’s.

 

ESPN SportsCenter interviewed Alyna, a captain of Groton’s varsity girls basketball team, and the team’s coach, Joe Crail, about Saturday's 42–40 win over St. Mark’s and a play that the coach says he will now call “The Alyna.”

 

After displaying the 2016 and 2018 plays side by side, SportsCenter anchor Sage Steele asked Alyna what was going through her mind as the seconds ran down. “Coach called a time-out just prior to that shot,” Alyna recalled. “And he said, ‘we’re going to run the same play we ran two years ago.’ So when we got out onto the court, we knew what we wanted to do…we wanted to get the win.”

 

Steele seemed incredulous that the team would understand a direction to run a play from two years ago, but Alyna assured her, “We all remembered the play. It’s hard to forget when you beat your rival.”

 

In those final seconds against St. Mark's, Alyna was concentrating on the win, not on the fact that she might repeat her 2016 feat. “I wasn’t really thinking that much about two years ago in that moment,” she said. “I would say we all just wanted to win really badly and get the win in regulation time instead of going into overtime. And we got it done.”

 

Coach Crail described Saturday’s shot as “more suspenseful” than the 2016 clincher. That first buzzer-beater was “a swish, and it was instant celebration,” he said. “On Saturday it … seemed like it bounced on the rim a couple times. It hung on the rim until it fell our way. And it was I think more shock on Saturday because you never thought it would happen again.”

 

Reminding Alyna that her coach planned to name the play for her, Steele then asked what Alyna would call the play. “I think I’d call it Beat St. Mark’s,” she replied, “because the last two times we used it we beat our rivals, which is the best feeling ever.”

Watch the ESPN interview.