Florida College’s Anthony Allen rips the rim off on emphatic dunk
Florida College's Anthony Allen will soon have an unusual souvenir to commemorate the most memorable dunk of his basketball career.
His coach plans to present the freshman forward with the rim he snapped off its moorings Friday night.
"He deserves to keep it," Florida College coach Jim Romkey said Monday. "It's a memory he will remember forever."
Allen stunned his coach, his teammates and even himself late in Florida College's 71-64 victory over Warner University with a show of strength rarely seen at any level of basketball anymore. When guard Alvin Satram missed a contested transition layup, a trailing Allen finished the play with such an emphatic two-handed follow slam that the entire rim broke off in his hands.
"I'm still kind of stunned by the whole thing," Romkey said. "It literally broke the rim. It wasn't showing any wear. It just snapped the metal right in half. It wasn't like these were 45-year-old rims either. The rims were put up three years ago when we put our new gym floor in. They were regulation."
In the three days since Allen's dunk, he has received attention uncommon for a player from Florida College, a tiny Tampa-based institution that is one of 92 small private schools that compete in the United States College Athletic Association. More than 100,000 people had watched YouTube video of the dunk by Monday morning and the clip is still spreading quickly on social media.
Though nobody at Florida College expected Friday's game to be delayed 30 minutes for one of the rims to be replaced, it doesn't surprise Romkey that Allen was the player who caused it. The 6-foot-6, 205-pound freshman was a two-sport star in football and basketball at Eustis High School (Fl.) and has shown a penchant for highlight dunks in practice leading up to the start of the season.
"He's very athletic," Romkey said. "I think he even had some interest from D-I schools to play football, but he decided to play basketball. I'm very glad about that."
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