It may not have come from halfcourt, but a buzzer beater in Tupelo, Miss., still might be one of the year's best. Just to make the whole experience even more impressive, the shot capped a furious rally that saw the Tupelo (Miss.) High Golden Wave close with a 13-point rally within the game's final four minutes.

The shot you see just after the 55-second mark above -- sent in to Prep Rally by loyal blog follower and Tupelo public address announcer Braden Bishop -- followed two missed free throws by Tupelo guard Deontaye Ewing that would have pushed the Golden Wave into a 72-72 tie with Starkville (Miss.) High. After Ewing missed the first of the duo he had to miss the second to give Tupelo any chance of the tie.

He did, and absolute madness broke out, with a Tupelo player eventually chasing down the ensuing loose ball, finding a way to keep toes inbounds near the left sideline and sliding a pass to senior teammate Chris Brooks just

Everyone is on Facebook ... except one of the nation's top football recruits, who officially logged off the site last week after he blamed it for making his recruiting process "a living nightmare."

In full, here's what Philadelphia (Miss.) High linebacker C.J. Johnson wrote on his Facebook wall just before signing off the site for good.

"This is my last Facebook post and I'm gonna leave facebook with this. Linda Johnson has never worked as a house worker making 100,000 dollars a year and I will not be a Mississippi state bulldog and I'm not considering Mississippi state anymore bc you have constantly comment on my page send me crazy inboxes and has made my recruiting experience a living nightmare. Goodbye facebook."

The potential college star's exit from the social media realm, which was first highlighted by The Clarion-Ledger, has sparked new questions over the role of Facebook, Twitter and other social media in the age of hyper-focused modern college recruiting, where fans have

Last week was all about buzzer beaters, so we figured we'd make this week more about the miultitude of terrific dunks wafting around our favorite web-based video sites.

• Sam Thompson, Whitney Young (Ill.) vs. Orr (Ill.): Sam Thompson is heading to one of the nation's best programs -- Ohio State -- so perhaps it's no surprise that he takes over games seemingly at will. Still, to own a game against Orr, which features star Illinois-pledge Mycheal Henry, and score the final six points in a victory (INCLUDING this monster slam), is making a statement.

• Roderick Perkins, Campbell (Ga.) vs. South Cobb (Ga.): How Perkins is only a nominee -- and not a locked-in contender -- for the 2001 Atlanta Journal-Constitution Slam Dunk Contest we absolutely can't understand. Not only does he have the elevation and guts to throw down a 360 with ease, he has the marbles to do it in a game.

• Taylor Shropshire, Rome (Ga.) High: Ever wonder why you need to get back on a three-on-none fast break? The

The Super Bowl is still more than a week away, but the image which many feel will be most emblematic of the game in the future -- and the Dallas-Fort Worth region's first foray into hosting the world's biggest football event -- is already officially on display. As of 11 a.m. CST Friday, a giant hunk of steel in the shape of Texas will forevermore leave its mark on Fort Worth.

Perhaps even more enormous than it was made to appear in conceptual drawings, Gerdau Ameristeel's 16-foot tall, seven-ton steel Texas (it was originally scheduled to weigh just six) is, in fact, propped up by an oil derrick. The "Cradle of Champions" sculpture does, in fact, have an enormous steel football protruding from it's heart, as if it was a stake sticking out of a dead vampire.

But most impressively, the hulking mass of steel is, in fact, comprised of recycled scrap steel from high school stadiums across the state, and is now brandished with the names of some 2,000 NFL players who began their long

When Chief Sealth (Wash.) High freshman boys basketball coach Tre'Von Lane tells his players he understands what they're going through, they tend to take his word for it. After all, he was in their shoes just three years ago. Now, at the tender age of 17, the senior is splitting his time between leading the Seahawks' varsity basketball team as one of the area's best point guards and serving as the head coach of the school's freshman team.

It's a unique arrangement borne of Lane's incredible maturation from a struggling freshman with a 1.9 GPA to a 17-year-old senior sporting a sparking 3.5. According to the Seattle Times, the senior was prodded by mentor and tutor Lisa Hara, who began working with the senior after he was diagnosed with a learning disability following his freshman season. The senior not only improved his grades and leadership on the court, he became more vocal and active in helping out his peers off it.

"I enjoy helping kids out with basketball, because I never had

Eighteen years. That's how long it had been since Oregon City (Ore.) High lost a girls basketball game on its home court entering Tuesday's Three Rivers League faceoff against Clackamas (Ore.) High. And, for the first time since Whitney Houston ruled the music world with "I Will Always Love You," the Pioneers looked at the scoreboard at the end of the game and saw a team other than Oregon City with the higher score, with Clackamas emerging as a 68-65 victor.

"What the Pioneers are really all about is being resilient," Oregon City coach Kurt Guelsdorf told the Portland Oregonian after watching his team lose at home for the first time in his head-coaching tenure. "We've won state championships when we've finished second or third in our league. Our kids are going to be hurt tonight and down a little bit, but I have a really good confidence that they'll bounce back."

Whitney Houston isn't the only cultural barometer available to get a sense of just how long Oregon City dominated its own

At long last, the nightmare affecting the legacy of one of history's greatest presidents is over. No, we're not talking about the legions of infidelity stories that have hit every leader from Thomas Jefferson to Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton. We're talking about Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, and their allegedly outdated nickname.

As we wrote about here at Prep Rally last week -- following an expose in the Washington Post that was equal parts effective, efficient and low key -- the Theodore Roosevelt (D.C.) High basketball team ordered uniforms with their traditional "Riders" (short for "Rough Riders") nickname embroidered across the front, only to receive jerseys proclaiming them the "Ryders."

After complaining about the mistake to the uniform vendor, the school was told it would have to return the jerseys for them to be fixed correctly. You can see the unfortunate uniform error in action in this photo gallery.

Perhaps all that vendor needed was a little more motivation.

While a case of brazen sexism has led to the firing and resignation of top soccer commentators in England, a slightly more subtle sexist jibe from a North Carolina high school basketball referee resulted in "corrective action" but no suspension, according to the News & Observer.

As reporter J. Mike Blake first relayed following the Middle Creek (N.C.) High girls basketball game against Milbrook (N.C.) High, a now infamous comment was uttered when referee Aaron Seay got involved in a heated discussion with Middle Creek coach Wes Petty, who is pictured at right. At the end of the on-court debate, Seay loudly declared that he couldn't be scolded by "a girls coach," in front of Blake, Petty, Middle Creek assistant coach Billy Shipp and the public address announcer working at the game.

"It was a terrible insult to women's athletics from someone in a position as an official," Petty told Prep Rally in an email. "If
those are his feelings then he does not need to be a ref. It was a blatant