Wednesday, January 7, 2009

A Quick Glance At The Record Book

The first 11 records listed in the Princeton men's basketball record book are all held by Bill Bradley. In all, Bradley holds 22 school records, not to mention such distinctions as the top 11 single-game scoring performances in school history and the three highest single-season scoring totals in school history.

In all, 19 players beside Bradley hold at least one school men's basketball record. The oldest mark is the 24 free throws in a game by John Uhl against Penn in 1912; the most recent is the 90 blocked shots by Chris Young in the 1999-2000 season. Young also set a record with nine blocked shots against Ohio on Nov. 26, 1999, in a game that was interestingly enough played in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Spencer Gloger's 10 three-pointers in a game also was set that season, on Dec. 18, 1999, against Alabama-Birmingham.

The player who holds the second-highest number of school records is Sean Jackson, who holds seven of them: three-pointers made per game and attempted in a season and career, consecutive games with at least one three-pointer made (56), three-pointers made in a season (95) and three-pointers attempted in a season (198, tied with Brian Earl).

Speaking of Earl, he has six records of his own, including three-pointers in a career (281, which is also the Ivy League record) and most games played (116).

Head coach Sydney Johnson has three school records: steals in a career, consecutive three-pointers made (11, over a two-game stretch) and most three-pointers made in a game without a miss (6).

The only other players in program history with more than one record are Dave Orlandini (who shot 51.3% for his career and 54.5% for the 1987-88 season from three-point range), Joe Heiser (free throw percentage in a season and career) and Dave Fulcomer (three rebounding records).

When talk shifts to unbreakable records, the one that usually comes up is Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. TigerBlog has always believed that that record will fall one day because it will only take 57 games to do it. Cy Young's 511 wins, for instance, can never be touched because of the sheer quantity.

Applying that same logic to Princeton basketball and its records would make Johnson's three-point records the most likely to fall, as it'll only take seven shots in a game to break one of them.

If you want to talk about the most unbreakable records in the book, you probably start with Bradley's 2,503 career points, 30.2 points per game in a career, 32.3 points per game in a season (1963-64) or 58 points in a game. Yes, it would only take one year for someone to average more than Bradley or one game to put up 59 or more, but TigerBlog doesn't see it happening.

The most unbreakable non-Bradley record? How about Fulcomer's 16.9 rebounds per game in the 1955-56 season? That's 456.3 rebounds for a 27-game season, or 50.3 more rebounds than Fulcomer's single-season record. No player in the last 40 years has more than 190 rebounds in a single season (Young in 1999-2000).

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