The Shot That Saved Lives

But he never misses a practice. He steps in on drills when the team needs an extra body, and by 11th grade he is good enough to join the junior varsity. He makes varsity as a senior, and though he often leads the team in prayer before games, he is only the second or third man off the bench. The Zebras win the Arkansas 5A state tournament in 2003, but Mykal—a defensive liability who still hesitates to shoot—plays barely five minutes.

Two months after the season Mykal walks into the gym and stuns Moragne. He has grown nearly four inches, to 6'4", and put some muscle on those long bones. Moragne calls a friend who coaches at Division II Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark., and gets Mykal a spot on the team, but Mykal has trouble with grades and drops out without playing a minute. He comes home, enrolls at Southeast Arkansas in Pine Bluff and drops out again. Still, he keeps playing and praying. He keeps growing. He stays on Moragne's mind.

One day in 2004 Moragne is watching his son play at Centenary College of Louisiana in Shreveport when he sees another coach wearing a shirt with the logo of Panola, a junior college across the border, in Carthage, Texas. Moragne walks up to him. "I'm a high school coach from Pine Bluff, Arkansas," Moragne says, "and I've got a kid who can play."

The Panola coach is Scott Monarch, famous in junior college circles for his Full-Court Express offense, and when Moragne describes Mykal to him—6'6", with Go-Go Gadget arms and a rare shooting touch—Monarch agrees to take a look. He drives four hours to Pine Bluff and watches Mykal shoot around at the high school gym. He sees the snapping wrist, the effortless stroke, and he needs less than 10 minutes to decide. "Mykal," he says, "I've got a full scholarship for you." Mykal hesitates. "I walk out this door," the coach says, "I ain't comin' back."

"Coach," Mykal says, "I want to go to school."

The Full-Court Express is Monarch's fast-break system, partly based on Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest's philosophy of war: Get there first with the most. Every time Panola gets the ball, the players run predetermined lanes toward the opposing goal. Mykal runs the two lane, which means he sprints down the right side of the floor and sets up outside the arc. If he gets the ball and is open, he shoots. He must shoot. There is no decision. If Monarch had sat down to design the perfect scheme for Mykal Riley's game, he could have done no better than the Full-Court Express.

The Ponies score nearly 100 points a game, and Mykal gets far more shot attempts than he would in a traditional half-court set. He averages 16 points, seven rebounds and four steals in his first year. He scores 18.4 points per game the second year, and soon Division I schools are recruiting him. His first choice is Alabama-Birmingham, because coach Mike Anderson's Forty Minutes of Hell reminds him of the Full-Court Express, but Anderson is hired away by Missouri. He and Mykal lose touch, and when Alabama coach Mark Gottfried flies in to see him, Mykal signs his name.

Now he is not afraid, because he has trained himself to forget every miss. He hits three threes and scores 17 points in his first Division I game, against Jackson State. He scores 14 in 12 minutes against South Carolina to carry the Crimson Tide to a comeback win. At the end of his junior season he drills a 28-footer at the buzzer to send the game into overtime against UMass. He is even better the next year. He is not a superstar, not even truly a scorer, because he rarely drives to the hoop. Mykal is a shooter. He averages 14.9 points and makes 43.3% of his three-pointers. That's 26th best in the nation.

Although Alabama has its worst season in 10 years, Mykal hits eight threes and scores 26 points in the first round of the SEC tournament to lead the Tide past Florida, the two-time defending national champion, in an 80--69 upset. That puts Alabama in the second round against Mississippi State, the top-seeded team in the SEC West, two hours before the wind blows a hole in the heart of Atlanta.

TEN MINUTES after tip-off, at 7:48 p.m., the National Weather Service issues a warning for a storm approaching the metro area. Frequent cloud to ground lightning and wind gusts to 45 mph, it says. Brief heavy downpours will cause ponding of water on roadways. A smear of green and red appears on the radar near the Alabama state line, about 100 miles to the northwest. Mississippi State leads 10--4, and Mykal is 0 for 3, thanks in part to the defense of Ben Hansbrough, younger brother of North Carolina's Tyler Hansbrough, who will soon be named National Player of the Year. "Hansbrough so far has been like Velcro on Mykal Riley," says Joe Dean Jr., the color commentator for Raycom Sports.