Sure, there were plenty of cheers for the Valparaiso University men's basketball team during Friday's come-from-behind, overtime win over Evansville. But it was a Valpo student-athlete from a different sport that received the loudest cheer of the night from the Athletics-Recreation Center audience.
 
Thanks to a proud partnership with Lakeshore Bone & Joint Institute, Valpo holds an on-court "Series Shootout" promotion during a second-half media timeout at each home game. One lucky fan has the chance to win $10,000 by making a layup, free throw, 3-pointer and halfcourt shot within 25 seconds. The contestant must retrieve the ball himself or herself after each shot.
 
Since the promotion began, no fan had successfully taken home the money. That changed on Friday, thanks to Valpo baseball left-handed pitcher Christian Hack (Oak Forest, Ill. / Tinley Park). Right after Valpo had surged ahead of Evansville by taking a 50-49 lead with 8:04 to play after having trailed by as many as 13, an already-raucous ARC elevated to an even higher decibel level when Hack made each of the first three required shots, before taking a moment to wave his hands in the air pumping up the crowd before unleashing the halfcourt heave.
 
"Honestly, I kind of blacked out," Hack said. "I was focused more on not missing the layup. Once I got the layup down, it was all instinct, and the rest was history. I've never done anything like that before. I would like to say I'm a good pickup basketball player, but I wouldn't say I'm a good basketball player. I didn't know if I was going to have enough time to get two halfcourt shots off, so I went into that thinking, 'I have one shot at this.' I wanted to build the moment and go from there."
 
When the ball banked off the glass and then went down the well, Hack's baseball teammates and other members of the student section stormed the court in celebration.
 
"The court storming was the best part for me," Hack said. "Turning around seeing 30 of my teammates and best friends coming after me and celebrating with me was unreal. Since then, there's been a lot of support from my teammates, people in the baseball community and my family. That's been pretty cool."
 
The shot was posted on X by Kendall Rogers of D1Baseball.com, a popular national website covering college baseball, on Saturday. He has 176,500 followers and his post of the shot received 92,000 views. The shot was highlighted on Valpo's ESPN+ broadcast of the game. Four posts by @ValpoAthletics on X received over 25,000 impressions. The Valpo Athletics Instagram post reached 9,000 and the Facebook post reached 13,000, for a total of nearly 50,000 across Valpo Athletics social media platforms.   
 
Hack, who said he plans to save most of the money and doesn't have plans for a big purchase, made the shot wearing a Roger Powell Illinois Fighting Illini jersey. When reached by ValpoAthletics.com on Saturday, Hack revealed the origin story of sporting the Valpo head coach's jersey.
 
"I've got to give credit to my teammate and good friend Nick Baffa for the jersey," Hack said. "He got the jersey off eBay a week ago. He was wearing it at the game, and when I randomly got picked to do the contest, he told me to wear it out there to support Roger. All credit to Nick Baffa on the jersey."