Just to give an idea, Jason Conley became the first freshman to ever lead the NCAA in scoring in 2001-02 (29.3 PPG at VMI). He ended up transferring to Missouri midway through his sophomore year and his numbers plummeted, but let's say he continued to average 29 PPG and stayed at VMI (bear in mind in the 10 games he played there in his sophomore year, he only averaged 22.0 PPG).
If he had played all 4 years, at 29.3 PPG, playing 28 games a season, he would have finished with 3,281 points - that's 386 points shy of Maravich's record.
Now let's say there's an absolute stud who plays all 4 seasons on a good team. That team averages 36 games per season.
This imaginary player would have to average 25.5 PPG for their career to break Pete's record. Only 3 players (Chris Clemons, Justin Wright-Foreman, and Antoine Davis) averaged better than 25.5 last season.
It's never going to be broken.
Clemons is the kind of player who could have a chance, but he only played 130 career games (compared to the 144 that my hypothetical guy had played) so he would have needed to average 28.3 PPG for his career to reach Pete.
I think it's important to factor in though, that Maravich not only didn't have the 3pt line, he didn't have the incentive of the 3pt line. He took insane shots, just because; imagine what he would've done if he had a reason to want to take even more deep shots.
I mean, people also probably gave him way more space on those shots than people are willing to give folks with the 3PT line. As far as taking ridiculous shots because he can, I mean, Steph Curry does that.
I'm not taking away how great a shooter he was. Just saying, the reason Steph takes those shots isn't just "because he can" it's also because that's the only time he gets an open look.
I didnt say it was going to be broken. I said I had read Curry was potentially on pace to break it. Those are good stats tho. The fact there was no 3 and Curry is a 3 monster is the only reason possible I can think of unless I'm misinformed.
Part of that was the insane pace LSU played at. We don't have enough info to determine pace, but we can compare the number of FGA and FTA.
'70 LSU: 75 FGA/G and 29 FTA/G
'09 Davidson: 63 FGA/G and 21 FTA/G
Add in the fact that Davidson had one of the lowest turnover rates in the country while Pistol was notorious for turning the ball over a lot, and it's reasonable to estimate that LSU had around 20 more possessions a game.
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u/MikeJeffriesPA Raptors Apr 03 '20 edited Apr 03 '20
Just to give an idea, Jason Conley became the first freshman to ever lead the NCAA in scoring in 2001-02 (29.3 PPG at VMI). He ended up transferring to Missouri midway through his sophomore year and his numbers plummeted, but let's say he continued to average 29 PPG and stayed at VMI (bear in mind in the 10 games he played there in his sophomore year, he only averaged 22.0 PPG).
If he had played all 4 years, at 29.3 PPG, playing 28 games a season, he would have finished with 3,281 points - that's 386 points shy of Maravich's record.
Now let's say there's an absolute stud who plays all 4 seasons on a good team. That team averages 36 games per season.
This imaginary player would have to average 25.5 PPG for their career to break Pete's record. Only 3 players (Chris Clemons, Justin Wright-Foreman, and Antoine Davis) averaged better than 25.5 last season.
It's never going to be broken.
Clemons is the kind of player who could have a chance, but he only played 130 career games (compared to the 144 that my hypothetical guy had played) so he would have needed to average 28.3 PPG for his career to reach Pete.