Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
Although he’s remembered for making the most incredible shot in Wright State basketball history — an “impossible to duplicate” buzzer-beater that propelled the Raiders to the NCAA Division II national championship — Mike Grote now was having trouble drawing any kind of bead on his future.
He felt he was about to lose everything.
He’d just returned home to Cincinnati from the University of Michigan Hospital where he’d been rushed after nearly bleeding out in front of Michigan Stadium before the Wolverines met Maryland in a football game in late September.
Diagnosed a few months earlier with a rare, autoimmune disorder known as Primary Sclerosis Cholangitis — a hereditary liver condition that in another form had affected his older brother Bob, a Wright State All-American basketball and baseball player, and had claimed the life of one of his aunts — his health had taken a severe turn for the worse.
His girlfriend, Chrissy Rippe, had gone to get food for their group and Grote, who already wasn’t feeling well, suddenly was very dizzy.
“Everything started spinning,” he said. “The stadium was swirling around me. I thought ‘Oh my gosh, I’m gonna throw up.’”
