With 4.2 seconds left in overtime, North Carolina A&T’s Dwayne Pierce sank two free throw shots to give the Aggies an 81-80 lead. With no timeouts, the Hawks needed a miracle.
Junior forward Cornelius Robinson III took the ball to inbound it, and passed it to junior guard Corey Miller, who began to race up the court.
Prior to this moment, Miller was a quiet presence on the men’s basketball team. Growing up in nearby Ocean Township, he played his first two years of high school basketball for Ocean Township High School. He moved over to Pennington High School for his final two years before heading to Monmouth. In his first two seasons with the Hawks, he didn’t see much playing time. This season however, he’s seen his action start to ramp up. In a Dec. 21 game against Lehigh, he played 22 minutes and made all four of his shot attempts for a respectable nine point performance. Besides that game, Miller had never played more than 12 minutes in a collegiate basketball game in his career.
On this night however, he received starting-caliber minutes due to an injured senior guard, Jack Collins. Miller had five points in 36 minutes, including a three-point basket with 17:56 left in the second half to cut North Carolina A&T’s lead at the time to two points. That basket was a big one, but the one he was about to make would be the biggest shot of his career so far.
As the seconds ticked off the clock, Miller was able to get past mid-court, and with one second remaining, he threw up a prayer from 33 feet away. As the ball was in the air, the horn sounded. There was silence, and then total pandemonium.
Miller’s shot bounced off the backboard and into the net. Players and students alike rushed onto the court and surrounded Miller. The Hawks had won the game on a buzzer-beater from one of its most unlikely heroes. The expectation is that junior forward Jason-Rivera Torres or sophomore guard Justin Ray, the two best scorers on the team, would have taken a shot like this. However, tonight was about Miller.
The shot reached national headlines. In Friday’s edition of ESPN’s SportsCenter, Miller’s shot was ranked number three on ESPN’s top ten plays from Thursday. It’s the second time Monmouth University has been featured on ESPN’s top ten plays this sports season. Wide receiver Tra Neal’s trick-play touchdown pass to tight end Jack Neri in a football game on Oct. 4, 2025 was the other play that was featured, as that play came in at number ten on ESPN’s list for the Oct. 5 edition of SportsCenter.
In a postgame interview with Monmouth Digital Network, Miller said that he was looking to pass the ball to Rivera-Torres, but after realizing he wasn’t open, he took the ball up court and took the shot himself. He also said he felt no pressure playing his game, as he had been practicing with the starters for the previous few days leading up to the game.
The buzzer-beater for the win was the first for the Hawks since Xander Rice’s half-court heave against Campbell on Feb. 15, 2024. That season featured two buzzer-beaters for Monmouth, as Jakari Spence also hit a game-winning buzzer beater on Dec. 9, 2023 against Northern Illinois.
In the 83-81 win, Rivera-Torres scored 26 points after playing the entirety of the 45 minutes. That mark was the second highest of his career, only behind a 30-point performance against Hofstra on Jan. 10. Freshman forward Stefanos Spartalis scored 21 points, his first game with at least 20 points ever and his first game scoring double digits since Jan. 3.
Following this victory, the Hawks hosted Hofstra on Saturday, Jan. 31 and fell 73-57 after trailing for the entirety of the game. Miller got his first career start in this game, and received a loud ovation from the OceanFirst Bank Center crowd after he was introduced.
Ray led the Hawks in scoring with 15 points in this game, with Robinson III close behind with 14 points. Junior guard Andrew Ball scored 10 points off the bench for Monmouth.
The Hawks currently sit at 11-12 on the season, with a 5-5 record in conference play. They are in a four-way tie with Elon, William & Mary, and Hofstra for fifth place in the conference standings. After a few days off, the Hawks will travel to Long Island to take on the Stony Brook Seawolves on Thursday, Feb. 5, followed by a trip to Philadelphia to take on the Drexel Dragons on Thursday, Feb. 12. These two games are very important for the Hawks, as both Stony Brook and Drexel sit one game ahead of Monmouth in the CAA standings, tied for third in the conference. The top four teams in the conference will get a double-bye in the CAA Tournament in March, so victories in these two games could give the Hawks an inside path to a top four seed in the conference tournament. Monmouth’s next home game is on Sunday, Feb. 15 against the Towson Tigers in a nationally televised game on CBS Sports Network.
