The Georgia Dome looked like a colossal silver warship, anchored firmly amid the roar and clamor of downtown. From early morning onward, fans dressed in red and black clashed with seas of blue and orange, streaming toward the seventy-thousand-seat leviathan.
Outside on the plaza, broadcast trucks from major television networks stood in a long line, cameras already perched on their mounts. Famed commentators Jim Nantz and Bill Raftery sat inside a temporary glass studio, behind which snaked endless queues of spectators—some holding high signs that read "GO ELI!" while others pounded their chests over painted Gator emblems, screaming at the top of their lungs.
Inside the arena, the house lights dimmed, leaving only the hardwood at center court illuminated in a pool of gold. The massive jumbotrons looped season highlights from both Texas Tech and the University of Florida.
The VIP seats were filled with familiar faces. NCAA executives sat shoulder-to-shoulder, while just a few rows away, basketball legends Gary "The Glove" Payton and Karl "The Mailman" Malone watched the court with keen interest. A little farther along, Atlanta Hawks star Joe Johnson and rookie Shelden Williams were busy posing for pictures with fans.
In the VIP section, one towering figure stood out above all the rest—Yao Ming.
Dressed in a simple gray suit jacket, he held a digital camera, snapping photos like an ordinary spectator as Xu Ling warmed up on the sideline. Chinese media swarmed around him, shoving microphones forward in a dense thicket, but Yao merely chuckled and said, "I'm just here to cheer on Xu Ling. Besides, TTU is a Texas school, isn't it? What a coincidence! Whether for business or personal pride, I have to back them!"
To the arena DJ's countdown, the pre-game ceremonies began. The renowned Morehouse College Glee Club took center court, singing the national anthem in pristine harmony. All seventy thousand spectators erupted in unison, bringing the arena to an instantaneous boil.
A bold graphic flashed across the big screens:
"NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP GAME — TEXAS TECH VS. FLORIDA"
Jim Nantz's rich, resonant voice reached millions of households across the nation over the live broadcast feed: "Good evening, basketball fans! We are live from the electric atmosphere of the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, bringing you the ultimate clash for the 2007 NCAA National Championship! Under the bright lights on one side stand the defending champion Florida Gators—a powerhouse that returned its entire starting five from last year's title run. And facing them is the Red Whirlwind that has authored miracles all the way from Lubbock, Texas—the Texas Tech Red Raiders!"
Bill Raftery took the mic, his voice trembling slightly with excitement: "Jim, take a look at this Florida team! The no-fly zone anchored by Joakim Noah and Al Horford is the most terrifying defensive fortress in college basketball. Corey Brewer is the most complete small forward in the country, and alongside Taurean Green's laser-guided perimeter shooting, this near-flawless squad is chasing the first back-to-back national championships since the Duke dynasty in 1992!"
"On the other side, Texas Tech's journey is nothing short of a fairy tale. A few months ago, no one believed they could make it this far—until the emergence of this sensational freshman from China." Nantz turned his focus to Texas Tech. "Eli Xu. Six months ago, his name was completely unknown, but today, he is the center of the basketball world. Over the past month, he has led his team to stunning upsets over Duke, North Carolina, and Ohio State, averaging 28 points, 10 rebounds, and 5 assists. We can say without hesitation that without Eli, TTU wouldn't be on this dream run. Now, only one final hurdle stands before them. Can they deliver a storybook ending for the ages?"
With the pre-game ceremonies concluded, both starting lineups stood near their benches, listening to their head coaches' final instructions.
"The most important sentence in the English language is 'God bless America,'" Bob Knight told his players. "If this is our last stand, I believe God has already made the best arrangement. Get out there, and make every Florida fan in this building shut their mouths!"
Moments later, the two head coaches met at midcourt for a handshake.
If Bob Knight's coaching style resembled a stern patriarch from an old black-and-white film—commanding, unyielding, occasionally showing warmth but never knowing how to express it properly—then Billy Donovan was like a vibrant, modern drama. Donovan dedicated himself to being a mentor and confidant to his players, understanding how to guide young men rather than drive them through fear.
This philosophical contrast was no mere abstraction. Donovan had publicly questioned Knight's hard-nosed methods before, candidly telling reporters: "I want to be the kind of coach my own children would want to play for. I've seen far too many coaches turn red in the face on the sideline, using vulgar language and stripping away their players' dignity. I don't believe that's what coaching should be about."
Now, the Florida Gator dynasty he had painstakingly built stood just one win away from coronation. Facing Knight, a towering relic of basketball's old guard, Donovan wanted far more than just a win. What he yearned to prove was an entirely new basketball philosophy. He didn't just want to win tonight; he wanted to win the future.
"Coach Knight, I'm afraid your run ends here today," Donovan said as their hands met.
"No matter the outcome, our season ends here today anyway," Knight fired back coolly, turning his words back on him.
Then, the game tipped off.
When Florida's starting five took the floor, their presence was undeniable: Joakim Noah, Al Horford, Corey Brewer, Taurean Green, and Lee Humphrey. Three future lottery picks. In terms of sheer talent, they were arguably unmatched across the entire collegiate landscape. Yet even a team this gifted had not completed an undefeated season.
For Texas Tech, that meant anything was possible.
Right from the opening whistle, TTU showed their mettle.
Noah won the tip, but Martin Zeno reacted with lightning reflexes, snatching the loose ball and sprinting into the frontcourt to feed Jarrius Jackson for a quick three-pointer.
Moments later, Corey Brewer couldn't resist the urge to take on the challenge, calling for an isolation against Xu Ling. As the nation's consensus top small forward, Brewer found it hard to accept that Xu Ling—a freshman without a single championship ring to his name—had become the hottest college player in America. On what grounds?
Under Xu Ling's suffocating defensive pressure, however, Brewer's contested jumper clanked hard off the iron. TTU pushed the pace immediately, using the defensive rebound and fast break to race out to a flawless 5–0 lead.
Florida steadied their nerves quickly. Taurean Green calmly called Joakim Noah up for a pick-and-roll, used the screen to create daylight, and buried a pull-up three, stopping the bleeding in an instant.
On the very next play, Al Horford delivered an emphatic rejection on a Texas Tech guard's layup, springing Brewer on the fast break for an easy bucket to tie the game.
This fierce, tit-for-tat exchange set the tone for the entire first half.
Florida relied on the dominant interior presence of their Twin Towers to steadily build momentum. Noah and Horford caused havoc in the paint, repeatedly hauling down offensive rebounds and converting second-chance putbacks. On the outside, Green had the hot hand, knocking down shots from all over. Florida was playing textbook, balanced team basketball.
Texas Tech refused to back down, unleashing blistering firepower from the perimeter.
Xu Ling, Jackson, and Zeno took turns letting fly, raining down three-pointers! Jackson pulled up without hesitation off screens, Xu Ling drained a high-difficulty three from the corner right in Brewer's lunging face, and both Zeno and Jackson played with relentless energy. Though they had no true answer on defense inside, their perimeter attack gave the defending champions endless headaches.
The lead changed hands repeatedly, with the deficit never exceeding five points. Every time Florida pounded the ball inside for a score, TTU answered with a dagger from beyond the arc. And whenever Taurean Green's threes threatened to blow the game open by connecting Florida's inside-out game, Xu Ling clamped down on Brewer, cutting off the Gators' perimeter flow.
On the final possession before halftime, Green brought the ball up, hoping to milk the clock for a buzzer-beater. But Xu Ling struck out of nowhere on a double-team, poking the ball loose for a steal. TTU broke out in transition. Stopping on a dime a step behind the three-point arc, Xu Ling launched a pull-up three over Brewer's trailing contest.
The horn sounded. The ball splashed through the net.
"Eli hits the buzzer-beater to end the half! It's 42 to 40, Texas Tech leads by two!"
The roar inside the Georgia Dome nearly blew the roof off.
It was, without question, a championship bout played at the absolute highest level.
Unlike previous rounds, Xu Ling had undeniable support tonight.
He didn't have to carry the entire load with a 38-point barrage just to counter an elite center, the way he had against Greg Oden and Ohio State.
Florida, on the other hand, found Brewer stifled in half-court sets by Xu Ling's defense, and with TTU shooting at such a high clip from the field, the Gators couldn't fully leverage their rebounding edge to trigger their trademark transition offense.
Florida's much-hyped Twin Towers certainly held their own down low. Horford was flawless, but Noah had begun dropping down the boards in the eyes of several scouts in attendance.
At this time last year, had Noah declared for the draft, he might well have pushed the Italian prospect aside to go number one overall. Now, however, his draft stock was slipping—he was no longer a lock for top three, or even top five. Too much passion, not enough polish; boundless energy, but prone to hotheaded, impulsive mistakes.
He hadn't matured into the player scouts had hoped for, but that didn't stop him and Horford from wreaking havoc in TTU's paint.
Even so, the Red Raiders held a two-point cushion.
"With no advantage inside, TTU has to stay hot from the perimeter. The moment their shooting cools, the tide will turn toward Florida."
"But can any team realistically sustain that kind of shooting all night long without winning the glass?"
In the second half, Bill Raftery's words proved prophetic.
Texas Tech's outside shooting began to waver. Brewer finally found opportunities to leak out in transition, and bolstered by their ironclad interior presence, Florida's perimeter shooters fired away with growing confidence. Taurean Green picked up right where he had left off in the first half.
In a six-minute span, Florida ripped off an 11–4 run, swinging from a two-point deficit to a five-point lead.
Bob Knight called a timeout, beckoning sophomore forward Michael Prince off the bench. "Mike, you're in for JJ! From here on out, you're glued to Brewer! Eli, you take Taurean Green! Everything tonight is in your hands!"
There was no magical scheme to erase TTU's interior disadvantage.
Their only recourse was to completely suffocate Florida's perimeter. Was it an act of desperation, or a stroke of genius that could turn the tide? Only time would tell.
Coming out of the timeout, the adjustment paid immediate dividends. Xu Ling brought far more suffocating pressure against Green than Zeno had. While Prince couldn't match Brewer's raw talent, Brewer had been knocked completely out of rhythm by Xu Ling in the first half and spent most of the night struggling to find his touch. Facing Prince, Brewer forced up a contested jumper—the worst possible choice.
Clang!
The shot bricked off the rim. Xu Ling hauled in the long rebound, pushed the break into the frontcourt, and buried a transition three.
The deficit shrank to two. The game had entered a brand-new phase.
Several scouts in the stands muttered knowingly, "From here on, it just comes down to who wants it more."
Florida regrouped on offense. Taurean Green tried to use a high ball screen from Al Horford to create separation, but Xu Ling shadowed him step for step, plastering himself against the guard and leaving no daylight to turn the corner or pull up.
Green was forced to kick the ball out to Corey Brewer on the wing. Catching the pass against Prince, Brewer threw a jab step, then rose for a stop-and-pop jumper.
Prince's long arms were already in his face. Under severe contest, Brewer's release looked rushed and awkward. The ball clipped the front iron and bounced away.
TTU looked to secure the rebound, but the interior glass still belonged to Florida.
Horford soared above Darryl Dora to snatch the offensive board and went straight back up with power. Dora dug in with every ounce of strength he had, but the disparity was too great; Horford used an up-and-under fake to clear space and dropped in a soft floater.
TTU didn't hang their heads. They understood this was simply the reality of the matchup—Florida's Twin Towers made their presence felt inside on virtually every possession. Tech's job was to offset that interior dominance with pure perimeter firepower.
On the next trip, Xu Ling caught the ball at the top of the key. Facing a double-team from Green and Noah, he bluffed with a jab step to his right, baiting Noah into retreating half a step, then instantly hopped back behind the arc, letting fly without even squaring fully to the rim.
Swish!
The shot brought Yao Ming leaping out of his VIP seat.
"That kid is truly ruthless!"
Florida kept hammering the paint. Under the hoop, Noah caught a slick pocket pass from Green and went up for a two-handed slam, only for Jon Plefka to come from behind and pin the ball against the glass at the apex—not a victory of sheer athleticism, but of pure anticipation and timing.
Zeno scooped up the loose ball, pushed the break forward, and kicked it out to Xu Ling in the left corner. Brewer flew out in a desperate closeout, but Xu Ling released a split-second quicker, burying nothing but net.
"Eli again! Back-to-back threes!"
On Florida's next possession, Brewer finally leveraged his physical tools to bully his way to the rim, bumping Prince back a step. Though Prince contested with everything he had, Brewer absorbed the contact and finished. Yet that hard-earned bucket only tied the game, because TTU answered right back with another three—this time from Michael Prince, whom Brewer had left wide open.
For nearly thirty-eight minutes, Texas Tech and Florida had staged a relentless, old-school slugfest where every single possession felt monumental. The game featured fifteen lead changes and seven ties, with neither team ever pulling ahead by more than five points.
The clock ticked down to the final two minutes.
Xu Ling attacked from the top of the key, driving hard left before cutting back toward the right side of the rim, only to be met by a bruising, reckless collision from Noah. The two bodies crashed together, but the whistles stayed silent. The ball squirted loose into the corner, scooped up by Taurean Green. The ensuing fast break shattered TTU hearts.
Green did what Xu Ling had done all night, pulling up on the break to splash a transition three. It was the most critical swing of the evening, expanding Florida's cushion from three points to six.
80–74.
"For the first time in thirty-eight minutes, one team leads by six! Florida can sense the promised land!"
TTU called a timeout.
Bob Knight drew up a set for Xu Ling to come off a screen for a quick three.
Florida, however, read it like an open book. Brewer abandoned all pride, hounding Xu Ling like a mad dog, while Plefka's weak screen failed to create any separation. Inbounder Martin Zeno was forced to loft a pass toward the interior, only for Noah's monstrous wingspan to deflect it away. Florida's overwhelming talent threatened to extinguish Texas Tech's hopes once and for all.
Just as everyone believed the possession would end in a turnover, Xu Ling dove out like a hunting cheetah! Flying out of bounds at the final millisecond, he saved the ball with an acrobatic flick toward Prince, who had sneaked along the baseline into the corner. The backup forward let out a primal roar, rising right into Noah's rotating contest to flush down an ugly, thunderous two-handed slam worth its weight in gold!
"Fuck yeah!" Prince landed and hammered his chest in fury. "We're gonna win!"
The roar of the crowd deafened the arena.
In that moment, none of the seventy thousand spectators cared that Xu Ling would be in the NBA in a matter of months, that Noah and Horford were bound for the lottery, or that others on the floor would soon turn pro. It was pure, unadulterated competitive desire, pure basketball, and that raw passion set the Georgia Dome on fire.
Fans who had entered the arena neutral began chanting for Texas Tech.
It was an eerie, suffocating atmosphere—as if the defending champion Florida Gators had been cast as the villain in a movie.
Billy Donovan sensed the shift. He could feel the entire building tilting toward Cinderella.
A surge of urgency rushed through him. He wanted to do something, anything, but what was left to do?
1:19 remaining. 80–76, Florida leading by four.
Florida advanced the ball into the frontcourt and dumped it down to Horford on the block.
Horford had already tallied 18 points, 15 rebounds, and 4 blocks, playing the best frontcourt basketball of anyone on the floor. But right now, tens of thousands of voices rained down on him, and Darryl Dora fought as if trying to press his entire body weight into the big man.
Under that crushing pressure, Horford opted for his safest move, pivoting into a turnaround jumper.
Clang!
Xu Ling soared into the lane, helping secure the defensive rebound.
TTU's ensuing possession bogged down into mud. Zeno's pass was anticipated, nearly resulting in a turnover; Prince worked frantically without the ball but couldn't shake Brewer's suffocating shadow; Dora's screen was easily circumvented by Noah. Every well-designed option on the chalkboard was being obliterated by Florida's raw athleticism.
Five seconds left on the shot clock. After several desperate swings, the ball ended up back in Xu Ling's hands. Standing three feet beyond the arc, Green shadowed him like a ghost, while Noah lurked menacingly at the edge of the paint.
No space. No time. No play left to run.
Xu Ling suddenly gave a pump fake, and Green bit instinctively, leaping forward. In that split second, Xu Ling pushed off with two giant retreating steps, rising into the air nearly thirty feet from the basket.
BANG!
The ball ripped cleanly through the net!
80–79! Just 38.8 seconds remained.
"Do you believe in miracles?!" Jim Nantz belted into his headset.
The cheers, the screams, the deafening chants of "TTU!" shook the Georgia Dome like an earthquake.
Florida called a timeout.
Billy Donovan drew furiously on his clipboard, knowing full well that every single detail mattered now.
"Noah, Horford, you two seal off the rim! Under no circumstances does TTU get an offensive rebound! Green, inbound the ball, then get across half-court as fast as you can. If there's no opening, get it inside. Joakim and Al have what it takes to close this out."
"Coach, we should push the break! Keep the tempo up!" Noah yelled, waving his arms in agitation.
"We slow it down and bleed the clock! Understand?"
"Yes, Coach!" the team shouted in unison, trotting back out onto the floor.
The cacophony inside the Georgia Dome hadn't dissipated in the slightest; if anything, it had grown even louder.
Donovan took a deep breath.
"Let's put an end to this damn Cinderella story, right here, right now!"
Taurean Green calmly brought the ball across half-court, knowing TTU's defense would swarm him like wild dogs. Sure enough, Xu Ling hounded him step for step, with Prince ready to help at a moment's notice. But Green didn't force the issue, delivering an entry pass right into Noah's hands in the low post.
Noah caught it with his back to the basket. Dora braced firmly against him, and Plefka crashed down on a double-team.
The Frenchman showed no fear, going straight up through the double-team because he knew that even if the shot missed, Al Horford would be right there—as he was now, elevating over everyone to snatch the offensive board and hammer down a putback dunk.
82–79.
25.4 seconds left on the game clock.
Bob Knight burned his final timeout.
"Eli, head up the floor and run a pick-and-roll with Jon, then read and react!" Knight said, not lingering on the shot itself as he turned immediately to their defensive scheme. "The second we score, go straight into a full-court press! If you can't get a steal, foul immediately! Watch the clock! Remember, time is not on our side—move fast!"
Florida was not worried about TTU's 1-5 pick-and-roll.
They had two premier big men.
When Plefka came up to set the screen, Horford switched out. Horford braced for Xu Ling to drive toward the rim, but instead, Xu Ling threw a quick jab step, slid laterally, and rose into a pull-up jumper.
Too fast. Too decisive!
Horford turned his head in disbelief.
Swish!
"82 to 81! Eli gets a quick two for Texas Tech! Fourteen seconds left, and TTU is in a full-court press!"
"Martin Zeno gets a hand on the ball! Oh, it's poked out of bounds! Eleven seconds!"
"Florida to inbound!"
"Taurean Green gets the ball! Eli's all over him! TTU looking for the steal!"
"Clock!"
"Watch the clock!"
With eight seconds remaining, Xu Ling moved to commit the foul, but before he could make contact, Green cleverly bounced the ball off Xu Ling's shins and out of bounds.
Florida had bled even more precious time off the clock.
Only six seconds remained as Florida prepared to inbound once again.
This time, they got the ball into the hands of Corey Brewer. The nation's top small forward possessed veteran savvy; shielding the ball tightly with his body, he walled off Xu Ling, intent on running out the final seconds.
Michael Prince had no choice but to wrap him up, sending him to the charity stripe. Just 4.8 seconds showed on the clock.
Inside the Georgia Dome, seventy thousand spectators unleashed a wall of screams and boos that threatened to tear the ceiling apart. Every set of eyes bore down on the free-throw line. Brewer stood at the stripe, feeling as though he were standing not on solid hardwood, but perched on the precipice of a crumbling abyss. Every gaze felt like a searing spotlight, piercing his skin, his muscles, cutting straight to the depths of his soul.
*Can't miss.*
He repeated the words in his mind, but the voice sounded so faint he could barely hear it himself.
He released the first free throw. The basketball traced a tight, tense arc through the air, clanking heavily off the front rim with a dull thud before bouncing away.
"OHHHH!"
A collective gasp ripped through the building. A look of stunned disbelief flickered across Brewer's face.
"Corey Brewer misses the first!"
"My goodness, the pressure on his shoulders right now!"
"He's struggled all night against Eli, and that has to be weighing heavily on his mind!"
On the sideline, Donovan's face remained composed, but a thousand thoughts raced through his mind. Too many improbable things had happened on this floor tonight. He had an instinctive premonition: whether Brewer made or missed the next free throw, they would still have to defend TTU's final possession. Texas Tech had no timeouts left; they would have to inbound from the far baseline. Why give them a clean inbound opportunity with time to set up?
In that split second, flashes of scenarios crossed Donovan's mind, and he made the call to induce chaos.
"Corey!" Donovan barked, startling his assistant coaches. "Miss it! Everyone else, get back on defense—don't let them cross half-court!"
*No, make it...* Donovan's assistants cried internally, but at this stage of the game, the line between certainty and madness had completely blurred.
Donovan's strategy was crystal clear: miss the second free throw intentionally, letting Horford and Noah crash the offensive glass. Even if they didn't corral the rebound, it would create pure chaos, chew up the remaining seconds, and deny TTU the time needed to organize a clean final push.
Ironically, when the team needed Brewer to make the shot, he had missed; but when his coach explicitly told him to miss, his aim was terrifyingly precise. The ball struck the back iron at the perfect angle, bounding high and far.
The trouble was that while missing on purpose was easy, controlling the trajectory of an intentional miss was extraordinarily difficult—nobody practiced that. Brewer wanted the ball to bounce toward Noah, but his touch betrayed him; the rebound soared straight over Darryl Dora's head. Dora simply boxed out Noah behind him, leaped up, and secured the board.
At that exact instant, Xu Ling shook off Taurean Green's tight clutches with a sharp back-cut, using a screen from Prince to break free into the open floor and sprint toward the frontcourt!
"ELI!"
Dora's desperate roar cut through the deafening roar of the arena. With every ounce of strength in his body, he launched a full-court baseball pass.
Sprinting at full speed, Xu Ling glanced over his shoulder, his eyes locking onto the ball hurtling through the rafters. Hot on his heels was Taurean Green—Florida's guard had sprinted back with incredible speed, closing to within a single stride.
1.1 seconds.
Xu Ling leaped, snatching the hard-thrown pass out of the air. There was no time to turn his shoulders, no time to square his balance, no chance to reset his stance.
In that flash of lightning, Xu Ling's body seemed to defy physics. Instead of trying to steady his momentum, he used the backward inertia to launch himself into an impossibly smooth, contorted lateral fade.
Like a piece repelled by a magnetic field, he drifted cleanly out of Green's reach, his feet hovering just strides ahead of the giant championship logo painted on the floor.
Time seemed to freeze.
The thunderous noise of seventy thousand voices vanished from the Georgia Dome, swallowed up by a low, humming drone. In Xu Ling's eyes, only the rim stood beneath the overhead spotlight—never had it looked so far away, yet never had it felt so near.
0.7 seconds.
His body was still drifting, angled nearly forty-five degrees to the floor. Completely devoid of balance, he dialed into the muscle memory etched into his bones across tens of thousands of repetitions, guided by a faith that had become pure instinct, and flicked his wrist.
The basketball left his fingertips, rotating with an impossibly soft arc as it soared toward the far end of the arena.
The red light flared. The clock struck zero.
In that suspended heartbeat, the world fell away. Time was stretched and pulled by an invisible hand, slowing to a dead stop.
The breath, the heartbeats, the choked screams of seventy thousand people hung frozen beneath the massive dome.
The scales of destiny, having tilted back and forth by fractions of an inch all night long, finally settled. On one side rested Florida's painstakingly built dynasty—a monument of talent, system, and back-to-back glory on the verge of completion. On the other side stood this single final shot, an unfamiliar figure from the East, and an almost fanatical faith in the impossible.
The entire arena held its breath for a single, suspended frame as seventy thousand pairs of eyes tracked the soaring orange leather.
It traced an agonizingly long arc, testing the limits of every beating heart, as if traveling across an entire century.
And then—
SWISH!
That crisp, pristine, piercing sound of the net cut through the quiet like music from heaven, ringing through the rafters of the dome!
An instant later, an earth-shattering explosion of sound tore through the arena!
"IT'S GOOD! IT'S GOOD! ELI HAS HIT AN IMPOSSIBLE THREE AT THE BUZZER! TEXAS TECH WINS THE 2007 NCAA NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP! A SHOT THAT WILL BE ETCHED IN HISTORY FOREVER! From total obscurity in Lubbock to the pinnacle of glory in the Georgia Dome, the Red Raiders have authored the greatest miracle in college basketball history! Eli Xu, the sensational freshman from China, ends the Florida dynasty on an impossible buzzer-beater! Ladies and gentlemen, this is no dream—this is history! The Texas Tech Red Raiders are national champions!"
Jim Nantz's voice cracked, hoarse, frantic, and overwhelmed with emotion, dissolving into the pandemonium erupting across the arena.
Bob Knight stood frozen on the sideline. He buried his face in his hands, then suddenly hurled both fists toward the ceiling. The words that had echoed in his heart all night long finally burst out in a roaring cry:
"Hallelujah! God bless America!"
Chapter 43