It appeared that this would be Morgan State men’s basketball’s night after senior guard Alfred Worrell Jr. made his fifth 3-pointer of the second half to give the Bears a 77-71 lead against visiting UMBC with less than 1:30 to go in regulation on Nov. 11.
Then the game went haywire. Retrievers junior guard Ace Valentine made a pair of free throws to trim the lead to 77-73 with a little more than a minute to play. UMBC then came up with a steal that led to a long Valentine 3-pointer, which cut the lead to one. The Retrievers called timeout to set up a full-court press, which led to a steal-and-score by graduate forward Paul Greene that gave UMBC a one-point lead.
Morgan graduate guard Walter Peggs Jr. then gave the Bears a 79-78 lead. After an official timeout for a review, the Retrievers got the ball in the backcourt with about 10 seconds left in regulation, leading to this ankle-breaking game-winner by graduate wing DJ Armstrong Jr. with one second to play:
So, has Armstrong has ever hit a game-winner with that little time left in a game?
“Never, that’s my first time,” Armstrong said. “It felt great to get a dub for the guys.”
UMBC head coach Jim Ferry tried to run a ball screen for junior guard Jah’Likai King to get the possession going. But King, who turned his ankle in the Retrievers’ 77-71 loss at Dayton on Nov. 8, had to quickly audible when he couldn’t get by Morgan senior guard Rob Lawson.
“He really didn’t get by [Lawson] and he flipped it back to DJ,” Ferry said. “What we always talk about is we are an assist team. … We try to work for each other. I thought he trusted his instinct. Instead of forcing it, he flipped it back to his teammate. DJ came off, curled it, stepped back and hit a big shot.”
Armstrong knew he’d have a chance to win the game …
“Shoutout JK,” Armstrong said. “He said he’s going to come off, give me a handoff and I said, ‘I’m shooting it regardless of what happens.'”
… and then he crossed up Worrell.
“Once he fell, I knew I had to hit the shot,” Armstrong said.
Armstrong is one of nine newcomers on the Retrievers, who improved to 2-1 with the win. The 6-foot-4, 190-pound wing began his college career at Odessa College, a JUCO in Texas, and then spent the last two years at Division II Texas Permian Basin before landing at UMBC.
Armstrong averaged 12.3 points, 2.9 rebounds and 1.5 assists per game for Permian Basin a year ago, with solid shooting splits across the board (43.5 percent from the field, 36.6 from 3-point range and 92.3 from the line). Most recently, he scored 17 points against Morgan. He’s averaging 14.7 points per game through three games.
Armstrong has thoroughly enjoyed his time in Catonsville so far.
“I’ve only been here since July, and I was just saying [on Nov. 11] that it feels like I’ve been here for four years [with] the way they’ve treated me, stuff like that,” he said. “It feels great to just come in and they’ve got confidence in me and I’ve got the same confidence and trust in them.”
Valentine, one of six returners on the team, likes the vibe as well.
“The camaraderie in the locker room with everybody, we don’t have any selfish people,” he said. “That’s one of our core values, being unselfish. We’ve just been working together in practice, going hard, competing against each other. We’ve got 11, 12 guys that can play. Everybody can play, so we know everything we do has to be for the team, so that’s why we’ve got so many unselfish guys. I feel like that’s why we’ve been working.”
Photo Credit: Courtesy of UMBC Athletic Communications