How Thurman Shot the Socks Off Duke : Key play: His three-point basket with 51.7 seconds to play is crucial to victory.

By THOMAS BONK

April 5, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — When Scotty Thurman was 6, he used to wad up a few pairs of socks, bend a hanger into a circle and fire the socks into the handmade hoop while he lay on the sofa in the living room of his home in Ruston, La.

Levell Thurman didn’t mind if his son shot socks, but when Scotty’s mother, Roma, came home, he had to pack up the living room basketball game before she got a look at it.

Inspiration is where you find it, and Monday night in the NCAA championship game, Scotty Thurman might have found his from way back in his childhood.

It was Thurman’s 22-foot three-pointer that broke a 70-70 tie with 51.7 seconds and sent the Arkansas Razorbacks on their way to a 76-72 victory over Duke and their first NCAA title.

Thurman pulled the trigger from a spot on the right wing as the shot clock spun down to nothing. With Antonio Lang rushing toward him, Thurman let it go over Lang’s outstretched arms.

Thurman socked it to him.

And so Scotty Thurman, former high school student council president, repealed Duke’s bid to win another national championship.

It had to be this way, he said, mainly because he’s been waiting for this occasion since 1987, when he watched on television as Keith Smart of Indiana beat Syracuse in the NCAA championship game.

“In the back of my mind, it’s always been there, that memory, thinking about it,” Thurman said. “I was hoping sometime it would happen again. I was hoping it would be me.”

He got his chance and he came through just like teammate Corey Beck thought he would.

“At this point, he is playing like a man,” Beck said. “That little boy who came out of high school is gone. I had a lot of confidence in him. I’m glad he is the one that took the shot.

Clint McDaniel, clutching the championship trophy in the locker room, said Thurman was something more than clutch.

“With the clock running down, he just steps up and rips it,” McDaniel said. “That has to be one of the best shots of all time. Scotty is going to go down in history with that shot.”

Yet it almost didn’t happen. Thurman got the ball from Dwight Stewart, who passed it to him from the top of the circle after muffing a pass from Beck. Stewart said he had intended to shoot it, but didn’t after he fumbled the ball.

“I had been telling him ‘It’s gonna fall, It’s gonna fall’ before because he had sort of been struggling,” Stewart said. “Then he put it up. I was just praying.”

Duke would not be able to come back, which is what McDaniel expected once he saw Thurman’s shot fall through the hoop.

“I started celebrating,” said McDaniel, who pointed out one obvious benefit of winning the national championship.

“We don’t have to practice tomorrow,” he said.

Thurman said first he knew the time, then said he had no idea there was almost nothing left on the shot clock. He was only thinking about shooting, which he said is about the same whether you’re 6 and lying on the couch shooting socks or 20 and trying to win the biggest prize in college basketball.

“When it came through the net, it had to be,” he said.

It had to be, all right, which is what Grant Hill said afterward with admiration.

“Great players make great shots,” he said.