Rebound

Les Henson, a six-foot, six-inch senior forward on the Virginia Tech basketball team, will never forget a game against Florida State University in Tallahassee last year (1986). With two seconds to go and the score tied at 77 to 77, Henson grabbed a rebound off the Florida State backboard a foot from the baseline and threw the ball overhand toward his own basket. “It was eerie—you couldn’t hear a thing in the arena,” Henson recalled later. “Then it just swished through the hoop” —from 89 feet, 3 inches away, making it the longest field goal in college basketball history. And Henson, who shoots with his left hand, had done it with a right-handed throw.

New York Times, quoted in March, 1987, Reader’s Digest