Loyola’s Donte Ingram explains why they didn’t call time out

Down one with less than a second left against Miami, Loyola eschewed a traditional timeout in favor of letting the boys play.

Donte Ingram’s buzzer-beater (basically — technically Miami had 0.3 seconds on the clock) at the end of the Loyola vs. Miami game Thursday afternoon was an immediate highlight of the tournament. It had fans of Loyola losing it and fans of brackets hollering about how “This is March.” But just moments before, just about all those same people were screaming at their TVs for Loyola to take a timeout.

Obviously, passing to Ingram and Ingram channeling his inner Steph Curry was the only true and correct move, winning the game in the most magnificent March fashion. Still, if he had missed everyone would no doubt be grumbling about timeouts. However, to hear Ingram tell it, not taking a timeout was not some heat-of-the-moment oversight — it was all according to plan.

In a post-game interview in which Ingram also asserted that “anyone” on the team could make that shot (uh, no), he explained the reasoning from the previous timeout:

"What was the discussion like in terms of what the plan was?If [a center] had got it, we would have taken the timeout. But since a guard got it, Coach just had faith in us and said, ‘let’s go, we’re in attack,’ so at that point it was just up to us to make a play and luckily we came through."

And make the play they did, with Marques Townes passing to Donte Ingram, who sealed the Cinderella upset with all-time exciting 3-pointer.

This is March, indeed.

Next: 28 Most Memorable Buzzer Beaters in March Madness History

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