Last Shot, Best Shot: Leyton’s Engagement Marks his Most Iconic Moment

Fresh from walking out of Gallagher-Iba Arena for the last time as an Oklahoma State senior Cowboy forward, Leyton Hammonds holds his degree at the elbow. Moving right to left, he weaves from photo to photo.

Jab step. Smile. Hug.

Crossover. Hug. Smile.

Step-back. Handshake. Smile.

Then he sees his alley. The lane is clear. Bailey Shurbet is the basket, and though she doesn’t know it, this is their moment.

“Let me get a pic with Bailey,” he says.

The Hammonds and Shurbet families line up to watch his one last shot. In a lot of ways — ways I’ll explain — every shot he has taken has led to this one. They smile and smile, but there is no snap, no flash, no photo. Not yet anyway. She looks to her right, and Hammonds pulls up.

On his right knee, still in his all black cap and gown, he looks her in the eyes, smiles and says, “Elizabeth Bailey Shurbet, will you marry me?” She doesn’t know what to say. She mouthes, “Yes,” but nothing comes out. She is overwhelmed. For the first time in her life, she sheds tears of joy. He asks again, and she belts the only word that matters.

Saturday was a big day for my bro Leyton! Glad I could be a part of it and could capture it on camera for my bro! Congrats y'all! pic.twitter.com/YlAXEdyZCA

— DevinLawrenceWilber (@DevinWilber) May 15, 2017

“Yes!”

Leyton took 595 shots in his career as an Oklahoma State Cowboy. Out of those 595, only one counted for a lifetime.

No Regrets. ‘None.’

It was going to be either graduation day or senior night.

For many months, Leyton and Bailey knew they were going to get engaged, but that was the only thing decided. Not when, not how and definitely not the wedding.

Only some of the families’ members could make it against No. 1 Kansas in GIA that night, so that left graduation. Although, senior night would have had its perks:

• 13,611 on hand plus an ESPN audience
• Would have happened in GIA, Hammonds’ four-year sanctuary
• And the story you are reading now would have been written at least 100 more times in at least 100 different ways.

But family came first, and graduation day had its perks, too.

“I thought it would be pretty cool to graduate the same day I propose to my future wife, and it made it a lot easier for me to remember the day,” Leyton said laughing.

The Cowboys lost 90-85 on senior night despite cutting it to as few as three with 20 seconds left. Leyton had 10 points, three rebounds and four fouls. He was mad. He said if he would have proposed that night, it would have been a weird atmosphere.

But graduation day was just right. It was happy, his way, with the people he loved and without regrets.

“None,” he said.

The 1

Long before Leyton’s last shot, he had to take his first.

Almost all of his friends knew Bailey. She was the it girl everyone loved from Ronald Reagan High School in San Antonio, but Leyton moved to Dallas-Fort Worth before they ever got to meet.

He had only heard of her from his pals — until she sent him a DM on Twitter. They talked for a while, but nothing much came of it, Bailey said. A few months passed and she woke up to a list of Instagram notifications from Leyton. They started talking again and never stopped.

It was as if Leyton walked into a rocking Phog-Allen Fieldhouse and sunk a half court shot the first time he touched the ball, and all he could use was his phone.

“I can honestly say that Leyton is the one person that I’ve never heard anybody speak bad about in my whole life,” Bailey said.

For him, it was a lot of the same.

“She doesn’t look like my mom, but she pretty much has every quality that my mom has,” he said. “Being a carer and a lover, it’s crazy. I’ve never met anyone besides my mom and my dad that put me over themselves, and she was the first.”

Momma saw it, too.

Lisa Hammonds is “very critical” of who her son brings into the house, but after spending this past Christmas with Bailey at the Hammonds’ DFW house, Lisa pulled her son aside and told him something he had never heard her say before about anyone outside of the family.

“Leyton,” she said, “I love this girl.”

For Leyton, that was the moment.

For Lisa, it was about getting to know the sides of Bailey that she might not have wanted to show.

“What you look for is someone’s character,” Lisa said. “You try to see what’s behind door No. 3. You try to see what’s lurking (or not) inside, and what we see in her is genuine admiration.”

Lasting Loyalty

Leyton won’t be remembered as a star at OSU.

In his four seasons, he averaged 1.5, 2.3, 10.6 and 8.1 points per game. He was always a complement to Marcus Smart or Le’Bryan Nash or Phil Forte or Jawun Evans.

That will always be OK though because Leyton had loyalty like none of the other men he played with, or for, at OSU had. When Travis Ford and the university parted ways, there was speculation about a transfer from virtually ever player, save Leyton.

“It’s hard to leave this place,” he said at media day before Brad Underwood’s first and only season as coach. “I bleed orange and black. I came here. I committed here for four years.

“This is my home.”

He meant that. I saw it in his eyes. Leyton’s career was almost unfair. Lisa said for her son, at times it was “more of a mental struggle than a physical struggle.” Things seemed so difficult and confusing that it makes you wonder why he stayed.

He was working on something. He was perfecting his last shot.

“Everything at GIA, everything at OSU, it helped me get to this moment,” he said. “Not even just basketball but proposing to my girlfriend because I’ve learned so many things outside of basketball from many coaches, from all the great coaches that came and went at OSU while I was there, all the great players that came and went while I was there.”

Three coaches, if you count Mike Boynton; 35 players, potentially three drafted Cowboys, and the rise, fall and resurrection of a program all swept through GIA while Leyton was on the roster. Through all of it, Bailey was there.

“He’s had a lot thrown on his plate, and he’s just persevered through all of it,” Bailey said. “He’s grown a bond with the university. He is a Cowboy through thick and thin. The relationships that he has formed along the way have helped form him into the man he is today.

“That last shot at Gallagher was just the icing on the cake.”

See, too often, players in all sports (but especially the money-making ones) come to the university in Stillwater, Oklahoma, to show they can play professionally. Yes, Leyton plans to do that overseas, where Bailey will travel with him after she earns her master’s degree from Wake Forest, until there is no more basketball to play. But Leyton got it.

OSU was neither a vindicator nor a scapegoat for him.

“OSU was a coming of age for Leyton,” Lisa said.

He took 594 shots in a uniform. Some, like the buzzer-beating 3 at Baylor that sent the game to overtime in 2014, sent fans into a fog of euphoria. Others, like the nine he hit in a senior night loss against Texas with just 4,000 people there in 2016, were forgotten before that game even ended. And those were just the shots he made.

Of those 594 shots in an OSU uniform, Leyton made more than 40 percent of them, but on the 595th, he was flawless.

“I know I had to end my career, and I did it the best way I felt like I could have,” Leyton said. “I’m grateful because I learned so much these past four years from players to coaches to people in academics to other students. I learned a lot.

“And I feel like everything that I learned molded me for that last shot.”