Who knew how long five seconds could be?
Mary Beth Miller certainly knows now. Five seconds was all it took for the Boston University lacrosse senior attacker to unknot a tie game with third-ranked Georgetown University yesterday and send the Terrier bench into a frenzy after its most dramatic comeback win of the season.
“With five seconds left you can’t really do anything else except just go,” Miller said.
After Angie Martin sent what appeared to be a last-ditch prayer of a shot flying out of bounds with only five ticks remaining on the clock, the Terriers earned one final chance when Miller regained possession for BU behind the net. And she made the most of it, spinning around the right side of the goal and wristing home a wraparound game-winner as time appeared to expire.
“They were leaving the crease kind of open for most of the game, and Lindsay [Lewis] was right next to me so she just cleared through for me,” Miller said. “Both the defenders stuck on her so I knew I had to take the shot.”
The whole scenario seemed to take a split-second to unfold, and as soon as the ball hit the back of the net, the Terrier bench exploded into cheers and rushed onto the field, mobbing Miller and her teammates.
But those same five seconds suddenly seemed to last an eternity. Georgetown coach Ricky Fried quickly came storming onto the field from the sideline, and after a short argument stood back as all three officials huddled near midfield. Confusion ensued for a moment as the Georgetown players headed back onto the field, but the issue of Miller’s goal was actually not in question. Instead, two seconds were put back onto the clock for one final draw control, an anticlimactic end to a thrilling upset victory.
“I think there was a question of whether the goal should count or not, whether there was time on the clock when the goal was scored,” said BU coach Liza Kelly, noting that there had been a time issue at the end of the first half when the horn sounded well after the scoreboard clock hit zero. “I think [Fried] had a leg to stand on, definitely. I would be complaining as well about that.”
But Miller and her teammates had nothing at all to complain about, as they all learned exactly how much could be done in five short seconds.
“We’ll do a lot of situations [in practice] where we’ll tell the team there’s 30 seconds left and we’re down by one or up by one,” Kelly said, though she admitted she’d never seen a BU game decided so close to the final gun. “It’s like March Madness — a buzzer beater.”
And for a Terrier team that was held scoreless for over 20 minutes of the second half, five seconds must have seemed like an eternity.
“I looked at the clock, I saw five seconds, the first thought was I’m definitely taking a crease roll right now,” Miller said. “We didn’t want to go into overtime, no way.”
The fact that Miller was the one to end it was fitting, as the senior has quickly become a leader for the Terriers in her final year on campus, leading the team in assists and ranking second in points. And people have taken notice. Comcast cable station CN8 was on hand at Nickerson Field to film a short feature on Miller — a subject that had been decided long before her heroics took place.
After a 32-goal, 64-point 2005, Miller has already netted — in just over half a season — 22 and 46, respectively in 2006.
“Every game she has gotten better, she really is completely stepping up,” Kelly said. “We’ve always kind of joked as a coaching staff if you wanted to cut off our head, you’d take Mary out of the game. She’s great — I mean the assists, her one goal of the game is the winning goal. She wants the ball in her stick.”
And the Terriers would be wise to put it there more often. After all, all they have to lose is five seconds.