It’s one thing to hit the game winning shot but it’s another thing to do it 80 feet out with one second left on the clock.
That’s exactly what happened when East Boston High School senior guard Pat Santos took a foul shot rebound down by two points and heaved the ball 80 feet for an ESPN-number one highlight game winning shot.
Santos’s shot catapulted the Jets over Madison Park 43-42.
The buzzer shot caused a bench clearing celebration for Eastie as Madison’s head coach Dennis Wilson stood on the sidelines in disbelief.
After the game Wilson seemed more than impressed by Santos’s shot.
“With one second, c’mon,” he said.
Santos, who only had one point in the game before the three point victory shot, said he just got the ball and shot it.
“There was no time to think,” he said.
The shot was played and replayed as the highlight on local news station and was deemed the ‘number one highlight of the week’ by ESPN.
The Jets tied the game 40-40 after sinking two foul shots with 12 seconds on the clock.
Madison took the ball down court and Eastie fouled a Madison player as he tried to sink a three pointer from the corner.
Madison went to the line sinking the first two foul shots. Wilson made the call to his player at the foul line to miss the third shot so time would expire.
“You can’t get a shot off in one second,” said Wilson after the game.
Santos rebounded and in one motion just tossed the ball down the court and nailed the once-in-a-lifetime shot.
The win put the Jets at 4-0 on the season but dropped to 4-1 after losing to Charlestown 53-48 last week.
“You see it on ESPN, but you never see anything [like that], that was an amazing shot,” Jets coach Shawn Brown told the Boston Globe. “I looked and I just watched the ball. But Pat’s a gutsy kid. And if someone is going to take that shot, he is going to take it. I wasn’t surprised it was Pat.”
Hockey
After beating O’Bryant 6-4 in their season opener, the East Boston High School boys hockey team has lost three in a row.
The team fell to Foxboro High School 7-1, then to St. Joseph’s Prep 9-2 and was shutout 9-0 by Newton South.
“A lot of these teams are throwing three lines at us and we are only working with two,” said head coach Bob Anthony.
Also, the hockey team has been plagued by injuries so far this year. During the game against Newton, defenseman Robert Gray took a hit to the head and suffered a concussion. He’ll be out until January.
“He’s a good defenseman and has been a factor in a few games breaking up plays,” said Anthony.
Anthony said he’s still tweaking his lines until he finds a lineup that jives well with one another.
“It’s just a matter of finding the right combination that works,” he said.
The Jets will face off against Nashoba Technical High School at home this week.