Geneseo men's basketball forward senior Scott Morton leapt into the national spotlight Tuesday night after footage of his improbable, game-winning basket against Oswego was broadcast on ESPN's SportsCenter as the No. 1 play of the day.
In addition, ESPN's Dana Jacobsen interviewed Morton on the ESPN2 program "First Take" Wednesday morning. The highlight was prevalent in the network's programming throughout the day, appearing as a story on the afternoon SportsCenter broadcasts and as a discussion topic on "Around the Horn."
Morton was surprised by his sudden celebrity status. "One of my friends actually called me from the team last year; I thought he was just kidding around with me after the WHAM 13 news had it on," he said. "I was just doing homework and I stayed up to watch the highlights - it was pretty crazy. Today I've been doing interviews since seven in the morning."
Video of the shot, taken by George Gagnier, Geneseo's sports information director, was broadcast on the 11 p.m. 13WHAM News that night, and was picked up by ESPN shortly thereafter.
The newfound fame doesn't seem to have sunk in on Morton yet.
"My home page is Yahoo!; I opened it up and I was the cover story on there too. It's just surreal to think that this is even happening to me," he said. "I really can't put it into words, it doesn't feel like it's happening. It's kind of like an out of body experience almost."
Morton said that in addition to ESPN, several other media sources have interviewed him, including Rochester television stations 13WHAM, WROC and WHEC, as well as several newspapers and Internet sites.
In addition to the media, Morton said that several professors and other coaches from the Geneseo athletic department congratulated him on Wednesday. He also has received a lot of messages from friends and strangers who were impressed with his game-winner.
"I've had like 200 text messages, about 20 voicemails, about 40 friend requests from people I don't know and about six pages of wall posts from my friends," he said. "Alumni have even e-mailed me and said, 'Great shot, way to put Geneseo on the map.'"
"What Scott did was nothing you could ever dream of," said Geneseo coach Steve Minton in an interview with Peter Bartell of RocLoop.com. "He had the presence of mind to follow the play up and knowing that he never had a chance to gain possession of the ball, to just shoot it."
Despite the excitement surrounding Tuesday's win, Morton said that he and his teammates have to remain focused on their upcoming contests.
"We can't live in the past now; we have two big games Friday and Saturday, both conference games away, they're going to be tough games," he said. "We have to look to the future now."
He added that his team may carry some momentum into the games over the weekend, but also stressed that his team is not going to be overconfident.
"Hopefully we're not too high on ourselves; that can be a problem," he said. "Hopefully we can grow as a team and take some of the momentum into the next game." Tom Wilder contributed additional reporting to this article.