TigerBlog got a message yesterday asking him if he thinks Bella Alarie will break "it."
By "it," TB presumed the message meant the school record for points in a career, which since 1990 has been 1,683 and held by Sandi Bittler Leland.
That figure is also the second-best by any Princeton basketball player, trailing only the seemingly untouchable 2,503 that Bill Bradley scored (that was in three seasons, with no three-point shot).
In fact, that raises two questions for TigerBlog.
First, how many points might Bradley have scored in four years and with a three-point shot? And two, is it realistic for anyone to ever make a run at 2,503?
To answer the first, consider what Bradley's actual three seasons were.
As a sophomore in 1962-63, Bradley scored 682 points. His best year point-wise was his junior year, when he scored 936. He then scored 885 as a senior in 1964-65, when Princeton made its Final Four run.
For context, consider that only one other player has ever scored more than 600 points in a season, and that was Brian Taylor, who had 676 as a junior in 1971-72. Taylor's sophomore year was 563, which is the fifth-best total in program history.
Think about how much attention Taylor's scoring feats would have generated had Bradley not done what he did. And Taylor left after his junior year for the American Basketball Association, which means he probably would have gotten near 2,000 points if he had another season to play.
TB has never met Brian Taylor, but he knows a lot of people who speak in glowing terms about who Brian Taylor is and his long commitment to education. TB did find THIS REALLY GOOD STORY FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES IN 1983 about Taylor, when he came back to the school after playing in the ABA and NBA to finish his degree.
Meanwhile, back at Bradley, if you assume he would have made a huge impact as a freshman but not necessarily to the extent that he did later, that would still have meant another, what, 550-600 points? That would have taken him well past the 3,000-point mark, something only 10 players in Division I history have ever done.
How many can you name? TB will have the list at the end.
How many three's would Bradley have had? Probably around 100, TB would guess. So figure he would have ended up with 3,150 or so points.
Can anyone get to his record of 2,503?
The most games any Princeton men's basketball player has ever played in is 123, by Ian Hummer, who just happens to be second all-time in scoring as well (1,625). If you do the math, then Hummer would have had to have averaged 20.3 per game for 123 games to get to 2,503.
That doesn't seem too wildly out of reach. It's unlikely, since only Bradley and Taylor have averaged at least 20 for a career and only three others (Geoff Petrie, Pete Campbell, Bud Haabestad) averaged 20 in a season.
You'd need a player who comes in as a freshman who can score anywhere on the court and is a great three-point shooter. Maybe one day?
Meanwhile, back at Bella, she now has 1,514 points. She has 11 Ivy League regular season games to go, and presumably the Ivy tournament and hopefully the NCAA or WNIT after that.
The record is 1,683, which leaves her 169 points away from tying the record. She needs to average 15.4 in the 11 Ivy games to tie it before any potential postseason.
Her next chances to add to her total come up this weekend, when Princeton hosts Cornell and Columbia Friday and Saturday.
Right now Princeton is 3-0 in the league. Yale, whom Princeton plays in New Haven next Friday, is 4-0, and every other team in the league has at least two losses. Cornell and Columbia are both 2-2.
As for the 3,000-point scorers, here is the list:
3,667, Pete Maravich LSU
3,249 Freeman Williams, Portland State
3,225 Chris Clemons, Campbell
3,217 Lionel Simmons, La Salle
3,165 Alphonso Ford, Mississippi Valley State
3,150 Doug McDermott, Creighton
3,067 Mike Daum, South Dakota State
3,066 Harry Kelly, Texas Southern
3,058 Keydren Clark, St. Peter's
3,008 Hersey Hawkins, Bradley
Clemons and Daum both graduated last year by the way. Clemons is currently with the Houston Rockets, and Daum is playing in Europe.
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There are a few other factors besides Freshman eligibility and the three point shot that could have influenced Bradley's point total that no one ever mentions. One is the shot clock. A faster pace may have led to more opportunities for Bradley to score although van Breda Kolff's teams usually played fairly fast anyway. A big one though is shooting one free throw when fouled prior to a team reaching seven fouls in a half. Granted, Bradley scored a lot of points on those free throw attempts but how many of those may have become a two or three point basket under today's rules? Also, shooting two free throws after a team reaches ten fouls in a half rather than all fouls being one and ones certainly could have been influential. Again, not that Bradley missed that many but it might have added a few more points to his total. The possession arrow rather than a jump ball is probably a wash as to how many more or less possessions a team may have had. No matter how you look at it it's an astonishing total which becomes more and more surreal as time goes on. Having had the pleasure of watching him and those teams play eases the pain of getting older.
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