Everybody does it. The internal scoreboard starts to tick down, the imaginary defenders set into position and the crowd behind the car starts to roar. You fake left but drive right. The plan is to go to the basket, but that imaginary defender in the post, where the driveway starts to lean off towards the grassy hill, steps up and cuts off your lane. “Quick,” you think, “time is running out.”Five, four, three …Plan B, you decide, You fake the drive, cross like Allen Iverson, step back like Michael Jordan and knock down the jumper like Magic Johnson. We’ve all been there before in our backyards — that last-second shot; the chance to win it all when everything and nothing at the same time is on the line.Brandon Knight is no different.As a kid growing in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., Knight rehearsed those shots all the time. They continued this season late at nights in the empty gym of the Joe Craft Center when the coaches were gone and the cameras were off.”I think every kid does that when they are growing up outside shooting around,” Knight said Tuesday, a day before the Wildcats take off for the Final Four in Houston. “Just 5-4-3-2-1 and shoot it. And then when you finally make it, you can just go inside and chill.”Those backyard shots have paid off during this NCAA Tournament run. Despite a late-season dip in his shooting numbers (Knight is 20 for 56 from the field in the last four games), Knight has been clutch.The freshman point guard missed his first seven shots against in the second round versus Princeton before hitting a game-winning layup in the final seconds. Against No. 1 overall seed Ohio State, seconds after Buckeye Jon Diebler nailed a game-tying 3-pointer at the other end of the floor, Knight pulled up at the right elbow and drilled a 15-foot shot with 5.4 seconds left and Aaron Craft in his face.”When I watched it, it was a lot faster than I thought than when I was doing it,” Knight said. “It felt slow. I didn’t really see a hand. I just saw the basket and shot it. I guess it was for a split second that I saw it because his hand was all in my face.”Once again, it proved to be the difference on a night when Knight’s shots (3 of 10) weren’t falling.”Some of those shots you make, some of them you don’t,” Knight said. “All I can do is thank God I was able to make those in big-time games in the tournament. It’s really just confidence and continuing to shoot.”They were shots Knight wasn’t hitting during the regular season. Remember Arkansas and Florida? Against the Gators he missed a potential game-winning 3-pointer before missing a pair of potential game winners in Fayetteville, Ark.All along, head coach John Calipari said he had faith in him and never doubted putting the ball back in his hands.”He’s a winner,” Calipari said after the Princeton game. “He’s not afraid to make a play. Guys like him aren’t afraid to miss.”Knight has hit game winners on the high school and AAU scene and withstood the pressure of being one of the top overall prospects in the country and the point guard for the University of Kentucky.Some call that intestinal fortitude — the ability to, when the game gets hot and the pressure is on, inject ice in your veins — a God-given talent. But Knight developed that habit in the driveway of his home and at local parks in Ft. Lauderdale. “Any kind of shot,” Knight said of the scenarios he worked on. “Normally jump shots, step-back jump shots where you are holding your follow-through.”Knight said he was playing himself in those recreations but was imitating other players’ moves and style.”Whoever was hitting game winners at the time,” Knight said.Knight didn’t have to hit a game winner against North Carolina, but he seemed to hit the big shot every time the game called for it. Just about every time the Tar Heels made a run at Kentucky, Knight answered with a momentum-halting 3-pointer.His biggest came with 2:51 left in the game, a trey from the right wing that broke the final tie of the game.”He is a great finisher,” senior forward Josh Harrellson said. “He missed a few in the beginning of the season, but it didn’t stop him. He is making big shots for us now when they count.”In large part because he hit those shots years ago in his driveway when they didn’t count.