Dez Wells said he heard from a number of friends after his game-winning, torso-contorting, in-the-air bank shot on Sunday that helped Maryland erase what had been a 14-point deficit and beat Northwestern, 68-67, at Xfinity Center.
"That was a good one," said Wells, who saw a replay of it when he was in the compliance office of the school's athletic department.
Wells said it was reminiscent of playing H-O-R-S-E in the park.
"It doesn't look normal, you play basketball so much, you've taken that shot plenty of times, I've taken that shot plenty of times, not under those circumstances or under that pressure," Wells said after practice Wednesday.
"You take awkward shots, playing around with you friends, 'Can you do this? I can do this. Can you do this too?' Just fine tune and add some stuff to your game. It was just something that happened."
Interestingly, Wells doesn't think it was the highlight in his three-season career at Maryland. Nor was hitting the game-winning 3-pointer in the final seconds to beat Miami last season.
"I would say being a part of my first year here when they rushed the court after we beat Duke, that would be the highlight for me," Wells said. "Not just because it was Duke, but I always saw like schools rush the floor on TV, so to be a part of that is still one of the highlights of my life so far."
Maryland coach Mark Turgeon still seems a little embarrassed by his double fist pump and primal scream after the victory, though he can certainly justify it because of how important the game was coming off a 19-point loss at Indiana.
"You act like a fool every now and then," Turgeon said. "I was excited. I was happy for Dez, I was happy for the team, I'm happy for the fans. I'm happy for us. It was good, 6-2 [in the Big Ten] is a heckuva lot better than 5-3, it's not even close.
"I don't want to take anything away from Northwestern. They played an exceptional game. But for us to survive that and play the way we played … You felt defeated the whole game and then you look up and Melo's shooting two free throws to give you the lead and you're like, 'Really? I can't believe this is happening.'"
Turgeon said that Northwestern guard Tre Demps hitting a step-back jumper over Wells seemed like "justice" considering how well the Wildcats played.
"There were a lot of things going on," Turgeon said. "I've been coaching a lot of games over my career, 500 and some games if you county my JV at Kansas, and I've never had anything like that."