Chicago's Tyquone Greer hits game-winning 3-pointer just 9 days after being shot
In the debate over the nation's toughest prep basketball cities, Chicago need only point to this story.
Chicago (Ill.) Orr Academy boys' basketball coach Louis Adams declared Tyquone Greer "done for the season" on March 9 after his senior All-City guard suffered a gunshot wound to the calf at a party.
Nine days later, Greer netted the game-winning 3-pointer in a 71-68 victory against North Chicago that propelled his Spartans back to the Class 3A state semifinals, according to the Chicago Tribune.
"This could have been our last game and I wanted to make my presence felt," Greer, who begged into the game after playing sparingly in the first half, told the paper. "For me to take that shot, God planned it for me because he has some better stuff for me. I knew I was going to make it. I was very confident.
"My leg was still kind of shaky, but this could have been our last game so I wanted to be out there. If we lost, I wanted to make sure that I was on the court with my team. That's all that really mattered."
Greer, 19, was among six people shot when a 22-year-old man returned to a West Side party following an argument and opened fire around 3:30 a.m. on March 9, according to the Tribune. The three-star recruit who has offers from a handful of Division I programs missed Orr's next playoff game, and then reportedly played all of one minute in Friday's sectional final against Oak Park (Ill.) Fenwick.
He played just two first-half minutes in Tuesday's state quarterfinal (super-sectional), but convinced Adams to insert him for the final 1:18 after North Chicago's Kurt Hall tied the game at 65-65 on a pair of free throws, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. That set up Greer's Kirk Gibson moment.
“We knew if Greer had a decent look, he could knock the shot down,” Adams told the Sun-Times. “He had been bugging me all night that he had wanted to play."
