Michael Smerconish: This you really gotta see

POP QUIZ: Which of these SportsCenter-worthy moments is false?

a.) A kid dons a blindfold and wins $500,000 by sinking a half-court shot at halftime of a University of Maryland basketball game.

b.) A high school senior in Ohio sinks a full-court heave at the end of the third quarter of a playoff victory earlier this month - then repeats the feat when a local news team comes to practice a few days later.

c.) A blind high school senior hits the game-winning free throws with 10 seconds left as his team's best shooter watches from the sideline.

The correct answer? Choice (a).

Nonetheless, the prank played on Amir Blumenfeld is currently one of the most popular videos on YouTube.

Blumenfeld, attending a game at the University of Maryland, is selected to attempt a half-court shot - blindfolded - with $500,000 hanging in the balance. What he didn't know was that his buddy, Streeter Seidell, had primed the crowd to go berserk regardless of whether or not Blumenfeld made the shot.

Of course, he missed, but when the crowd went crazy, Blumenfeld, convinced he was $500,000 richer, began dancing around the court and hugging the Maryland Terrapin before falling to his knees in joy - until his buddy walked onto the court with the oversized check and revealed the gag.

The video is hysterical. Too bad for Blumenfeld that his luck wasn't as good as Casey Weber's.

Weber, a senior at Dayton Christian High School, has had a season-long disagreement with his coach, who often complains about Weber's habit of launching full-court shots at practice. In fact, coach Chip James instituted a rule: 10 push-ups for a full-court air ball. Five if you hit the backboard.

MY HUNCH IS that the rule has since been dropped.

Last week, coach James admitted becoming "caught up in the moment" as his team celebrated Weber's 90-foot heave at the buzzer in the third quarter of an eventual victory over Arcanum High School. And when KSL-TV visited a Dayton Christian practice the next week, it took Weber just two tries to make the same shot.

Naturally, the Weber video is also garnering hundreds of thousands of visits at YouTube. I only wish more of those people could see Matt Steven, because in the season of March Madness, his story is the best of all.

He's a senior at Delaware County's Monsignor Bonner High School and a reserve on the St. Laurence CYO basketball team his brother Joe coaches. I learned about Matt from Rick Reilly's column on ESPN.com.

After each practice, the kid usually practices his free-throw shooting. He's good for about 50 percent from the line. Not a great percentage - until you consider his disability.

"I don't have any eyesight," Matt told me. He's been blind since birth. Which makes the events during a February charity tournament even more amazing.

Joe Steven asked the opposing coaches and the refs at a Valentine's weekend tournament if they'd mind if Matt shot his team's foul shots. Nobody objected.

In the first game, Matt knocked down St. Laurence's first two freebies en route to shooting 4-for-8 for the game.

The next night, Matt started at 0-for-6. St. Laurence trailed St. Philomena by eight points in the final minutes. So Joe put the starters back in, instructed them to put on a full-court press, and St. Laurence cut the deficit to one with under a minute to play.

"Basically, it was in the last quarter, and there was about probably 10 seconds left, and we were down by one. And I think it was my cousin Ryan that got fouled or whatever, and he decided to let me come in and shoot the two foul shots." Matt's cousin Ryan Haley is St. Laurence's best player.

So with Joe tapping a cane on the rim so his brother could gauge the location of the basket, Matt knocked down the first free throw. He knew it, he told me, because the crowd went nuts. Tie game.

'RIGHT AFTER THE first one, I just waited for a couple seconds and then I took the next shot," he recounted. "And just like the first one, it just went right in."

As Joe rushed onto the court to help Matt find his way off, St. Phil's pushed the ball down the floor as the clock wound down. Their last-ditch effort missed.

It's too bad that clutch performance hasn't found its way to the top of the pile on YouTube.

The site is full of fart jokes and full-court heaves - not that there's anything wrong with that.

But Matt Steven's game-winner is a reminder that there's always something more compelling out there - even if it's sight unseen. *

Listen to Michael Smerconish weekdays 5-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Read him Sundays in the Inquirer. Contact him via the Web at www.mastalk.com.