No one found anything out of order in this high school basketball championship game, though the court was dirt and set outside in the nearly abandoned downtown of Armorel, Arkansas. Rock sat next to a two-man radio crew who represented the visiting Pulaski Academy Bruins, and neither they nor anyone else in attendance was affected by the setting.
There was clutter all around the block-long court, dominated by rusted farm machinery and broken-down cars and pickup trucks. Fans crowded both sides of the street on boardwalks in front of ramshackle, vacant stores.
Everyone there, regardless of which team they were for, was mesmerized by Armorel's three-point specialist Ault Ferguson and the nearly unimaginable comeback he had orchestrated since halftime.
Rock wanted to tell the broadcasters about an Armorel sharp-shooter he had watched back in the spring of 1994 at the Class A tournament in Scranton, but he couldn't remember the player's name. He wondered if Ferguson and the player from all those years ago were related.
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