With 4.7 seconds left in Friday night's CUNYAC Championship -- that's the Division III City University of New York Athletic Conference to you laypeople -- Baruch College and the College of Staten Island were tied 74-74.
Baruch was set to inbounds the ball from under its own basketball. Rather than have the inbounder heave the ball as far as he can and hope for the best, Baruch ripped a page out of your offensive coordinator's playbook.
It wasn't just like football, as the color analyst said, it was football. “It is something that I’ve had in the back of my mind for a little while. I had seen something very similar on social media. The game has gotten to a great place where coaches can share and learn so much on social media,” Baruch coach John Alesi told the Washington Post. “It looked like a football play. It was so unique and I saw the value in it. We didn’t run the same play, but it was the same concept. We’re wide receivers, thinking about running your route, and breaking off your route and coming back to the ball. I had it in the back of my mind that in the right spot, it would be a great way to get the ball in bounds.” The play Alesi referenced was this one, borrowed from Northern Kentucky.
The proliferation of the spread offense has led many to refer to modern football as "basketball on grass." So basketball-like is football now that the feedback loop is now complete, turning basketball into football on hardwood.