Buzzer Beater

In basketball, a buzzer beater is a shot taken before the game clock of a quarter expires but does not go in the basket until after the clock expires and the buzzer sounds. The term is normally reserved for baskets that beat an end-of-quarter buzzer but is sometimes referred to shots that beat the shot clock buzzer. If a player releases the ball before the buzzer sounds, the shot still counts if it goes in even though the clock expires before the ball goes through the hoop.

Officials in the National Collegiate Athletic Association, National Basketball Association, Women's National Basketball Association, Serie A (Italy), and the Euroleague (Final Four series only, effective 2006) are required to use instant replay to assess whether a shot made at the end of a period was in fact released before the game clock expired. Since 2002, the NBA also has mandated LED light strips along the edges of the backboard and the edge of the scorer's table for the purposes of identifying the end of a period.

Although buzzer beaters are fairly common, several instances have been recognized as special occasions:

The term is sometimes applied to analogous achievements in other sports.

In ice hockey, like in basketball, a buzzer beater is a goal that is scored just as the clock expires in a period. Unlike in basketball, however, the puck must completely cross the goal line with 0.1 seconds or more remaining on the clock in order for the goal to count; if the period expires before the puck completely crosses the goal line, the goal is disallowed and the green light boots up.

In gridiron football, a last-minute field goal (or, much more rarely, a successful fair catch kick) kicked as time expires can be described as a "buzzer beater," though no actual buzzers are used in that sport. In all codes, if a play is in progress at the time the clock expires, play continues until the ball is dead. (In American football, the snap on the buzzer-beating play must take place before the clock expired, except if the defense commits a foul on the last play, in which case an untimed down is added. In Canadian football, a play can and must be executed even if the clock expires after the previous play but before the snap.) Several important games have been decided on the outcome of buzzer beaters, such as Super Bowl XXXVI and Super Bowl XXXVIII, both of which were decided on successful kicks by Adam Vinatieri; in contrast, Scott Norwood's infamous missed kick in Super Bowl XXV decided that game in favor of the opposing New York Giants. A related concept in football is the Hail Mary pass.

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