Manhattan takes down Army on a buzzer-beater by Wesley Robinson

RIVERDALE, N.Y. – With three seconds left, all hope was lost.

Trailing by one with six to play and inbounding under the Army basket, Manhattan got the ball into Masiah Gilyard, who dribbled to the left and passed the ball to Devin Dinkins. He caught the ball and set his feet to shoot, but there was one problem.

HIs back foot toed the sideline, and the official blew the whistle. Dinkins was right next to the Manhattan bench. How no Jasper pointed out that he was out of bounds, I’ll have no idea, but now Manhattan just needed to foul quick to have a chance…. Or did they.

“There’s things that really good basketball programs do, one of them is you never give up,” Manhattan head coach John Gallagher said. “You play it to the end, and if a team was really high and low, they stayed even keeled, so that’s the first feeling. It’s like, ‘oh my god,’ we have something here.”

During the timeout where the officials looked over the clock, Gallagher told his team to deny the ball.

“If they go over the top, they go over the top,” he said.

Wesley Robinson guarded the ball, and Isaiah Caldwell couldn’t find his man.

Jalen Rucker, who led all scorers with 20 points, was blanketed, so was Josh Scovens, who ran down the court, Caldwell had to try to get it to him.

However, when Caldwell released the ball, it looked like it was headed directly for Shaquil Bender, who stole the ball and starting heading back the other way.

“Last year, he shoots it from half court,” Gallagher said of Bender, who had an off-night shooting the ball, but he made multiple key plays down the stretch and found Robinson to keep the game alive, and then this one as well.

Robinson didn’t know if Bender would see him as he cut to the basket, but he made himself an option, but when the guard zipped a pass from just across half court to the second hash on the left edge of the paint, it was his time.

“We steal it, and a miracle happens,” Gallager said.

On a career night, where he scored 11 points, had 9 rebounds and 3 assists, Robinson put in a floater to win it for the Jaspers (3-2), 80-79 over Army (3-3), in improbable fashion. Last year, Manhattan’s regular season ended with a buzzer-beater loss at home to Canisius in overtime, as Tre Dinkins sunk one from half-court. This year, the home slate started with two memorable wins, over Fordham and now Army.

“This is a program win because there’s so many things that we could’ve done that we could’ve…