Inside South Carolina's game-winning shot against Florida

He was in the huddle when Frank Martin was diagraming the Gamecocks’ ultimately game-winning play that beat Florida but wasn’t on the court. It wasn’t until Maik Kotsar, who was supposed to make the pass, told the coaches he couldn’t make the pass with a sore shoulder that Haase was inserted into the play.

Was resulted was a near 90-foot pass to Chris Silva that etched Haase into Gamecock legend.

“You play around throwing balls like that but never in a game. In high school we used to do quick long outlet passes but never a touchdown pass,” Haase said. “I’m glad it worked.”

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The play South Carolina won on was a play the team practices routinely, and never was Haase the inbound passer.

But, on Saturday, he found himself on the baseline doing what the coaches wanted—a sprint to the right then immediately cut and run left to make the pass—with the benefit of someone guarding him.

That was something Martin anticipated with the Gators opting to put more men back on defense and double-teaming Silva by the basket.

“I don’t know about you, but if I had to fight I like five against four than four against five. We executed, their guys were there. We came up with the ball and they didn’t," he said. "They had two guys on Chris Silva. They made a mistake where both got in front of him. That’s just a mistake. If one stays behind and one stays in front, we might not be sitting here talking about what a successful play we ran.”

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Then, Hassani Gravett and Tre Campbell would cross paths at midcourt with the hopes that one of the Gators’ big men switched defensively and was on the cat-quick Gravett near the midcourt line.

Haase’s first option was to throw it long, over the half-court line but, if the defense did switch, get it to Gravett in the open court. The defense didn’t switch, though, and with just 3.5 seconds left, though, Gravett only had time for three dribbles and a shot or two dribbles and a pass.

“He would have to dribble a couple times to get by his defender. He didn’t have that much time, and I knew if I threw it up Chris would have a chance to catch it. I honestly didn’t even look at Hassani. I knew Chris was going to do something.”

But, with precious seconds left, Haase chose to go with the next best option, a rainbow-arc of a pass to the 6-foot-9 Silva, who got behind two defenders and the rest is history.

“I didn’t think he was going to throw it, but when it was up in the air, I felt like he was going to catch it,” AJ Lawson said. “When he caught it, I didn’t think the basket was going to be open like that.”

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Since then, Haase’s pass and Silva’s subsequent dunk have been plastered all over social media and plenty of people have reached out to the sophomore big telling him he should be playing quarterback instead of the power forward spot.

Haase joked he maybe saw the Christian Laettner to Grant Hill heave—the pass to which all full-court shots are measured—once but hasn’t thought much about it in the days following the 71-69 win.

“I never played football either,” Haase said. “I just saw Chris with both hands up and I was like, ‘If I throw it over both defenders, he’ll catch it.’ I just focused on that, and it was on point.”