Basketball History

In basketball, points are the sum of the score accumulated through free throws and field goals.[1] When an individual player scores 100 points in a single game, it is a rare achievement. Only a small percentage of players have ever accomplished this feat in an organized basketball game. What follows is an incomplete list of all of the verified occurrences of players scoring 100 points or more. Each individual instance of the achievement may have had different circumstances surrounding it, such as game length, opponent skill level and the league in which it occurred.

In the United States, 100-point games have occurred at least once at most levels of education. At the middle school level, 13-year-old 8th grader Bob Harrison scored all 139 of his team's points in a 139-8 win on February 3, 1941.[2][3] In high school, there have been 24 verified occurrences, 19 by male players and 5 by female players.[4][5] The first recorded instance was on March 8, 1913, when Herman Saygar of Culver High School (Indiana) scored 113 points against Winamac High School.[4] The first female to score 100 points at the high school level was Denise Long of Union-Whitten High School (Iowa), who scored 111 points during a state playoff game in the spring of 1968 against Dows High School.[6][7][8] That season, Long's senior year of 1967-68, she averaged a still-standing national record 68.2 points per game.[8] Her single game total stood as the high school female record for 38 years until Epiphanny Prince scored 113 for Murry Bergtraum High School (New York) on February 2, 2006.[9] The boys' high school record is 135 points, scored by Danny Heater on January 26, 1960.[10] Playing for Burnsville High School (West Virginia) against Widen High School, Heater made 53 of 70 field goals and 29 of 41 free throws.[10] His 135-point outburst is still the highest total for the high school level worldwide.[10]

At the college level, there have been five 100-point games, two of which were recorded by Clarence "Bevo" Francis of Rio Grande College.[11][12][13] Francis scored 116 points against Ashland College on January 9, 1953, but because the opponent was not a four-year institution, the total does not count as the official college record.[11] One year later, on February 2, 1954, Francis scored 113 against Hillsdale College, which had been the recognized highest total in United States college basketball history for 59 years; Grinnell College's Jack Taylor scored 138 points on November 20, 2012 to set the new all-time NCAA all-divisions mark.[11][12][14] Rio Grande College was (and is) not classified as a Division I institution, and therefore the only player to score 100 points at the Division I level is Frank Selvy of Furman University.[15][16] Selvy recorded exactly 100 points on February 13, 1954-less than two weeks after Francis scored 113-against Newberry College.[15] He scored his 99th and 100th points on a 40-foot shot as the final buzzer sounded.[16]

Professionally, there have been a number of occurrences of 100-point games worldwide. It has only happened once in the United States, however. Wilt Chamberlain of the National Basketball Association's Philadelphia Warriors scored 100 points on March 2, 1962 against the New York Knicks during a game played at Hersheypark Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania.[17] He made 36-of-63 field goals and 28-of-32 free throws, the latter being a particularly boggling statistic considering Chamberlain was a 51.1% free throw shooter for his career.[18]

Internationally, the highest single player total between national teams is 116 points, scored by the Philippines' Luis "Lou" Salvador in May 1923 against China.[19] It happened during the 1923 Far Eastern Games.[19] The highest single game total in worldwide organized basketball history, irrespective of gender, age or competition level, is 272 points, scored by a 13-year old boy named Mats Wermelin of Sweden.[3][20] He recorded every single point in his team's 272-0 win on February 5, 1974, during a regional boys' tournament held in Stockholm.[20] The highest total by a female basketball player worldwide is 136, scored by Anat Draigor of Israel.[21] It happened on April 5, 2006, in a 158-41 win.[21] Draigor was 46 years old playing in an Israel Division III League playoff game, which also makes her the oldest player in history to score 100 points.[21] Only one player, other than the United States' Bevo Francis, has recorded multiple 100-point games in organized competition. Croatia's Marin Ferenčević scored 101 and 178 points in April and May 2006, respectively, during Under-14 Croatian League matches.[22]

No.

Although the NBA has long been known, thanks to the work of writers David Berri and Ross Booth, to have a lower level of competitive balance than either the NFL or the AFL in Australia, it plays a schedule four to five times as long (82 games as against sixteen in the NFL and twenty-two in the AFL).

As a result, it is not practically possible for even the best teams to play consistently at their best for a full season in the NBA. This means that no team in the NBA has ever came close to a perfect season: indeed no team in the NBA (nor for that matter in MLB or the NHL) has started a season with as many as twenty-five wins (the equaivalent of a perfect season in the AFL).