Tuesday, October 16, 2007

“I wouldn’t have returned if I didn’t think I had a chance to contribute and help this team..." - Clayton Osborne

Admissions offices have a term for people like Clayton Osborne: non-traditional student.

And there might not be a better word than non-traditional to describe the twisting, turning road that led Osborne to the Lipscomb men’s basketball team for his senior season. As it turns out, that road finishes in a complete circle.

Osborne was a freshman at Lipscomb during the 2001-02 season. He hit perhaps the most-memorable shot of the Bisons’ Division I era and then after one year he was gone. Since then Osborne has gone on a two-year Mormon mission to Kansas City, played for two different collegiate teams, gotten married and earned two degrees.

Just when he was ready to pack up his basketball and go home, an opportunity came for him to don the Bison uniform one last season. At 25-years old, he’s already earned the old-man tag from his Lipscomb teammates.

“I believe this is where God wants me to be,” Osborne said of returning to the Bisons this season.

The Shot

Josh Slater was a seventh grader at Lipscomb Middle School when he sat in the stands for the first-ever game at Allen Arena. With three seconds left in the game against North Texas – a contest in which Lipscomb had trailed by as many as 18 points – Osborne took a pass off a missed free throw and launched a 65-foot prayer of a shot. As if guided by God, the ball banked in.

“My momentum turned me around so I was facing the other direction, so I didn’t know if the shot went in or not,” Osborne recollected. “But then I heard the crowd going crazy and my teammates started jumping on top of me.”

As fate would have, Slater and Osborne are now teammates. Osborne called Lipscomb coach Scott Sanderson’s office earlier in the summer to chat. Sanderson had his five-man freshman class gathered for a meeting and put the call on speaker phone.

“Josh was like, ‘Is that the guy who hit that shot in the first game here? I remember him’” Osborne said. “How funny is it that we’re going to be teammates now?”

By Nate Rau
Nashville City Paper Sports Correspondent