Afolabi Oyeneyin posted a video on his Twitter account of Virginia State’s president, Makola Abdullah, besting him during a short one-on-one contest.
“I was walking around Virginia State & the President of the school just embarrassed me,” the student captioned the video, which has since racked up more than 3.5 million views.
Oyeneyin explained that he was on campus with some friends looking to approach students and “cross them up”—switching the ball rapidly from one hand to the other and changing direction to get past his opponent, known as a crossover—in the hope of sparking a social media trend.
The video shows the 24-year-old getting the better of at least three other students, before Abdullah—a senior academic administrator with a doctorate in engineering—put him in his place. As Oyeneyin approached him, the Virginia State president swiftly stole the ball from the student.
In a moment worthy of a Hollywood movie, Abdullah then removed his jacket before bouncing the ball off Oyeneyin’s forehead, dribbling the ball through his legs and outstepping the student with a textbook crossover that, in basketball parlance, could be described as “breaking ankles.”
Students were heard going wild in the background, while Oyeneyin sported the look of a man who knows he’s just been embarrassed in front of his peers. To give the grad student his due, after sitting on the video for about a week, he was happy to share it on Twitter.
“I’m not gonna lie, it took a lot for me to post this. He definitely got me tho[ugh],” the student added.
“I knew it was going to be big,” Oyeneyin told CBS affiliate WTVR-TV.
“But this is insane, to be honest. I’ve never seen that happen before. People are seeing it from all over the world.”
For his part, Abdullah was magnanimous after becoming an internet sensation.
“You already know it’s all love. I can’t wait until everybody is back on campus,” he posted on Twitter as he shared a picture of him and Oyeneyin exchanging a socially distanced fist-bump.
“Most definitely, can’t lie you definitely got me […] but it’s always a honor to share these kind of memories with you,” Oyeneyin replied.
Abdullah added that he was “just glad I got these knees working.”
It may not be the last time the duo face each other on court. Oyeneyin has retweeted the picture with the caption: “rematch coming soon.”
