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Xavier's J.P. Macura hits 80-foot shot that is ultimately waved off during wild 30-second stretch

Xavier is on a remarkable run in the NCAA tournament, but the final 30 seconds of the first half in Saturday’s regional final against Gonzaga took the absurdity of it to another level.

First, on what should have been Xavier’s final possession of the half, the Musketeers missed a shot. Gonzaga’s Johnathan Williams reached for the rebound with one hand, failed to reel it in, and…

That is not only an own-basket. It appears to be a hand-to-floor-to-face-to-backboard own-basket, which… Well, has anybody ever seen that before? It’s a one-in-a-million fluke.

However, amazingly, it wasn’t the best thing that happened before the teams headed to their locker rooms for halftime. After Gonzaga’s Nigel Williams-Goss scored with two seconds left, Xavier’s J.P. Macura heaved a shot nearly the length of the court. Miraculously, it banked in:

After review, though, the officials waved off the play. It was so, so close.

The above shot shows the ball out of Macura’s hands with 0.1 remaining on the clock, but the clock on TV is a few tenths of a second behind the official clock. The light on the backboard is the thing to look at, and it shows that Macura was a few tenths of a second late:

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