Jordan Snipes
One of Jordan Snipes's teammates on the Greensboro (N.C.) Wicked Sticks softball team recently had an epiphany. "I've been playing with this guy for two years," says Snipes, "and he said, 'Man, I didn't know you were the guy who hit that shot.'" Yes, Snipes is the guy who hit that shot, the one that gave Division III Guilford College a 91--89 OT victory over Randolph-Macon on Jan. 31, 2005, and aired as five of SportsCenter's top 10 plays that evening. Snipes, then a sophomore, rebounded a free throw with 0.6 of a second left and from just inside the end line heaved a Hail Mary toward Randolph-Macon's basket. It went in. To say that he became a big man on campus is an understatement. "After I hit the shot, I needed a job, and I went up to a sports bar in Greensboro and the manager knew who I was," says Snipes, who graduated in '07 with a sports management degree. "I didn't [need] an interview."
As a senior Snipes was named first team all-conference, and a year later he played pro ball outside Düsseldorf, Germany, where he was the only American on the roster. "I just hated it," admits Snipes, who stuck for only a month. He returned to the States and shortly thereafter got the job he holds now, as a territory manager for American Snuff, a smokeless tobacco company. He lives in Greensboro with his wife of a year, Jackie, and plays for the Wicked Sticks, a competitive travel team made up mostly of former college baseball players. "It keeps the hunger there," says Snipes.
As for Guilford, the Quakers have made four straight NCAA Division III tournament appearances, reaching the Final Four in each of the last two years. Says coach Tom Palombo, who began showing footage of "the Shot" to potential recruits after the '05 season, "It kind of got us on the map."
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SCOTT K. BROWN (SNIPES)
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