Khalil Edney’s Miracle Shot Covered by SUNY Purchase Journalism Student

You may have seen Khalil Edney’s astounding 55-foot buzzer-beating shot in Sunday’s Mt. Vernon v New Rochelle Section 1 Class AA championship game.

But what you may not know is that SUNY Purchase journalism major Jordan Griffith was part of the MSG Varsity team that took the video of that amazing moment and helped it go viral.

SUNY Purchase’s Jordan Griffith on camera for MSG Varsity

Says Griffith: “It was incredible to experience an event like this, both as a fan of the game, and as a journalist. I will never forget those moments, and being a part of it all behind the scenes was special. I don’t think I stopped moving for 30 minutes, doing everything from editing to writing to speaking with people at other networks to spreading the video.”

The shot gave New Rochelle to a 61-60 victory over seven-time defending champ Mt. Vernon. Officials initially waved off the shot but later reversed their decision.

In addition to being a student in the SUNY Purchase journalism program, Griffith is a reporter for MSG Varsity and does a lot different things: runs stats, makes calls, does interviews, gives analysis, and Tweets updates. Sunday was the Section 1 basketball championships at the Westchester County Center in White Plains and he was assigned to work the entire day’s games (four in total).

Jordan Griffith (center) interviewing national champion University of Kentucky head coach John Calipari last year

“When the shot happened, things stood still for a few minutes, but then instantly went into mayhem,” he recalls. “I was a part of the first interview with all three stars, Khalil Edney (the player who shot it), Joe Clarke (the leading scorer and best player) and Rasaun Young (the coach).

“I helped our sideline reporter for the game grab the three of them, and then transcribed the interviews as they happened. I tweeted the best quotes from my Twitter account (@MSGV_JGriffith), and sent the quotes to our two writers for the game.

“When I got back to my computer, it was really time to get to business. We started to get in contact with the larger networks and get the video and article out there. I spoke with a friend at CBS and helped get them the video to play on their college shows/broadcasts, as well as a producer and reporter from ESPN. We tweeted the links out to anyone and everyone and were able to get two pages, the game-replay and the game story, the highest number of hits in our company’s history (nearly 10 times as many hits as any other web page we’ve had has ever gotten).

“I never thought I would be working in PR, but that’s literally what I was doing. Our head bosses were there and we all worked together to spread everything. By the end of the day, we had a viral sensation on our hands, and the story, as well as our network, was on every major news network in the US, as well as many around the world (the story was shown in Australia and also broadcast in spanish in South America).

“At the end of the day, all of our coworkers went to a bar and watched our work on ESPN. It was really a special moment for all of us.”

Awesome work, Jordan.