Last Ball in U-Hall: Stith Remains a Wahoo Favorite

Even with blood spilling out of his mouth and pain shooting through his head after taking an elbow to the mouth in the first round of the 1989 NCAA Tournament, Bryant Stith had the foresight to hide his dislodged tooth from the Virginia coaching staff.

“I could feel my broken tooth in my mouth,” Stith said. “What I did was I just spitted it in my hand and gave it to Ethan [Saliba] who was our trainer and I asked him not to tell the coaches, because I knew what the response would have been – immediate substitution.”

Even breathing was painful for Stith, since every time the forward sucked in air it would touch the open nerve on his gum. Stith didn’t miss even a single play though, and his team held on to pull out a 100-97 win over Providence.

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