It’s been a baffling few weeks of college basketball

The most bewildering shot I have ever seen

On a cold, cloudy Tuesday night in Memphis, Tenn., Mississippi wing Sira Thienou took the most inexplicable shot in recent memory, perhaps in the history of college basketball.

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It was an innocuous start to the play: Late in the third quarter, the Tigers take the ball out of bounds under their own basket, running a simple baseline out of bounds. Debreasha Powe hands off the cutting Tamya Smith to Thienou, whose superior length allows her to intercept an ill-advised inbounds pass from Daejah Richmond. Thineou stumbles, but uprights herself and continues dribbling up the court. With a wide-open Denim DeShields running out to her right, no one between her and the basket, Thineou decides to, uh ….

Every part of this is magnificent in its own way. First, there is of course the shot itself. It’s by far the longest attempt of Thienou’s career, by at least 12 feet, per CBB Analytics. She had never even taken a late-shot clock heave prior to this. Perhaps she thought the quarter was ending? Except the clock is right above the hoop, clearly showing plenty of time left.

Thineou’s instinct certainly isn’t to take deep 3-pointers; nearly 90% of her career attempts from deep have come within a couple feet of the arc, per CBB Analytics. Not including that shot, per Synergy, she has taken a total of eight pull-up threes in her Mississippi tenure.

Nothing close to a whistle sounded, and Smith wasn’t going to be touching her. Just your everyday instinctive halfcourt heave. And Thienou walks away after the ball trickles out of bounds as if she’s bewildered herself into a trance.

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There’s also Powe, filling the role of the chorus in an ancient Greek play.

As pure an impression of The Scream as you’ll see.

There’s Smith, feigning a swat toward Thienou while still running upcourt, with no mind paid to the possibility that, yes, Thineou is actually taking this shot, it’s not a fakeout, and it might need to be contested.

There’s Jayla Murray trying to find someone to explain the strategy that she wasn’t looped in on.

Sometimes you just have to answer the hero’s call, Jayla.

By far the most baffling part of this, though?

This shot is two inches from going in. A make which, by the way, would have prevented this game from going to overtime.

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Historic losses

Speaking of ranked teams underperforming against unranked opponents, then-No. 15 Duke went up against West Virginia last week on a neutral court in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. A first half-ending block by Blue Devil Jordan Wood on Jordan Harrison caused a skirmish in which both players and almost the entire Mountaineer bench got ejected under questionable rulebook interpretation, leaving Duke without its No. 5 starter and West Virginia with only five players and just one starter.

The Mountaineers ended up winning by eight.

Her Hoop Stats had the Blue Devils as a two-point favorite coming into the game, but with a three-point lead at the half and their opponent missing 80% of its starters and being unable to sub for the entire second half, they should have been prohibitive favorites to close it out. Instead, West Virginia started the second half on a 22-6 run and never looked back. 

It’s not the worst loss in program history, but it might be the most embarrassing.

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It’s hard to quantify embarrassment, of course. Maryland was a 43.2-point favorite over Virginia Tech on Jan. 26, 2012, when a six-point Hokies win marked the largest upset of the HHS era. By HHS rating, that was the No. 241 team in the country beating the No. 7 team in the country. 

That’s historically bad, but what makes it historically embarrassing? That was Virginia Tech’s lone win among its final 15 games that year.

No, I submit that maybe the most embarrassing loss in recent D-I history came from Pitt. The Panthers lost to D-III Scranton this past Sunday, 69-63. HHS can’t comfortably quantify because of the adjustment between divisions, and Scranton is a very good D-III team where Pitt is a woeful D-I team.

Any room for quantifiable error is more than made up for qualitatively, though — because Scranton is an in-state opponent. There is no excuse for differences in talent, or in coaching, or in resources, because anything Scranton has, Pitt should be able to have had if it wanted. It is the flagship university of the western half of the state, with a Power Four television deal funding the athletic program.

In terms of inter-division losses, Marquette losing to Grand Valley State six years ago was bad. But on the scale of P4 loss to in-state competition, I’m not sure anything registers.

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Editor’s note (Nov. 23, 6:42 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this story misstated that the Duke and West Virginia game took place in Morgantown. It took place on a neutral court in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.