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List of NCAA Division I men's basketball career scoring leaders
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In basketball, points are the sum of the score accumulated through free throws and field goals.[1] In National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I basketball, it is considered a notable achievement to reach the 1,000-points scored threshold. In even rarer instances, players have reached the 2,000- and 3,000-point plateaus (no player has ever scored 4,000 or more points at the Division I level). The top 25 highest scorers in NCAA Division I men's basketball history are listed below. The NCAA was not organized into its current divisional format until August 1973.[2] From 1906 to 1955, there were no classifications to the NCAA nor its predecessor, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS).[2] Then, from 1956 to spring 1973, colleges were classified as either "NCAA University Division (Major College)" or "NCAA College Division (Small College)".[2][3]
Numerous players among the top 25 scorers in Division I history played in the era before the three-point line was officially adopted in 1986–87. All of the players with a dash through the three-point field goals column were affected by this rule. Hank Gathers of Loyola Marymount is the only three-point shot era player on this list who did not make a single three-point shot. In the 1986–87 season, the three-point arc was made mandatory in men's basketball, marked at 19 ft 9 in (6.02 m) from the center of the basket;[4] at the same time, the three-point arc became an experimental rule in NCAA women's basketball, using the men's distance.[5] In the following season, the men's three-point line became mandatory in women's basketball, and from that point through the 2007–08 season, the three-point lines remained at 19 ft 9 in (6.02 m).[4][5] On May 3, 2007, the NCAA men's basketball rules committee passed a measure to extend the distance of the men's three-point line back to 20 ft 9 in (6.32 m);[4] the women's line remained at the original distance until it was moved to match the men's distance effective in 2011–12.[5] Still later, the NCAA moved the men's three-point line to 6.75 m (22 ft 2 in) for the main arc and 6.6 m (21 ft 8 in) in the corners, matching the distance used by the sport's international governing body of FIBA. This last move was implemented in two phases, with Division I adopting the new line in 2019–20 and Divisions II and III doing so in 2020–21.[6][7] Women's basketball did not adopt the FIBA arc until 2021–22.[8]
Additionally, several of the players on this list played during an era when college freshmen were ineligible to compete at the varsity level and competed on either freshman or junior varsity teams. As freshman and junior varsity statistics do not count toward official NCAA records, three players—Pete Maravich, Oscar Robertson and Elvin Hayes—only had three seasons to compile their totals. Larry Bird redshirted (sat out) his freshman year, and therefore, like Maravich, Robertson, and Hayes, his totals were also achieved in only three seasons. Maravich, a guard from LSU, not only owns the three highest single season averages in Division I history, but also the highest career total. Remarkably, he scored 3,667 points in a mere 83 games.
Four players on this top 25 list are enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame: Pete Maravich,[9] Oscar Robertson,[10] Elvin Hayes,[11] and Larry Bird.[12]
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Top 25 career scoring leaders
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All-time conference scoring leaders
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The following list contains current and defunct Division I conferences' all-time scoring leaders. The "conference founded" column indicates when each conference first began intercollegiate athletic competition, not necessarily when they began basketball. For example, the Great West Conference was established as a football-only conference in 2004 but became an all-sports conference in 2008 (with basketball actually beginning in 2009–10).[37] Also note that some of the schools on this list are no longer in the conference in which they are identified. Utah, for instance, is currently a member of the Pac-12 Conference, but when Keith Van Horn set the scoring record it was still a member of the Western Athletic Conference. Similarly, BYU is currently in the Big 12 Conference, but the career of its scoring leader Jimmer Fredette coincided with the program's last four seasons in the Mountain West Conference.
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All-time schools' scoring leaders
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These schools are full, current members of NCAA Division I, meaning they have finished the process of joining Division I or its historical equivalent. Some of the records below were set while the school was still in a lower division and are not intended to be solely Division I era scoring records; if no season-specific link exists, it is because the record was set while the school was a member of a lower division. Through 2023–24, the oldest school record is held by Jim Lacy at Loyola of Maryland, whose 2,199 points were last scored in 1949. The newest record holder, meanwhile, is Gibson Jimerson of Saint Louis, who set his record on December 5, 2024, during his sixth-year redshirt senior season. Lipscomb's John Pierce holds college basketball's all-time, all-divisions scoring mark of 4,230 points. He played from 1990 to 1994 while the Bisons were still a member of the NAIA.
All schools are listed with their current athletic brand names, which do not necessarily match those used when a school's scoring leader was active.
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Footnotes
- The original Big East Conference, founded in 1979 with basketball competition starting at that time, split along football lines in July 2013. The seven schools that did not sponsor Division I FBS football reorganized as a new Big East Conference, while the FBS football schools that had not left for other conferences, plus several new members, began operating as the American Athletic Conference. The American now considers its basketball history to have begun with the 2013 split,[40] while the current Big East maintains the basketball history of the original Big East.[41]
- Davis started his college career in 2018 at TCU, then as now a member of the Big 12 Conference. He transferred to American member SMU after one season, receiving a waiver of NCAA rules that at the time required a transferring player to sit out a season. After three seasons as SMU, he took advantage of the NCAA's COVID eligibility waiver for 2020–21 and later changes to NCAA transfer rules to transfer within the conference to Memphis for his final college season in 2022–23.
- Total includes only games played for American Conference members SMU and Memphis.
- The American West Conference began as a football-only conference in 1993–94. Basketball was played for just two seasons, between 1994 and 1996.
- Although the Ivy League was not formally founded until 1954 and did not play its first basketball season until 1955–56, it considers its men's basketball league to be a continuation of the Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League, founded in 1901.
- Although the Pac-12 Conference claims the history of the Pacific Coast Conference, the PCC operated under a completely separate charter.
- The Southland Conference recognizes Dwight "Bo" Lamar, who played at Southwestern Louisiana (now Louisiana) between 1968 and 1972, as their all-time conference scoring leader, using the criterion of points scored against conference opponents only.[71] He scored 1,054 points in conference games.[71] Additionally, Southwestern Louisiana did not join the Southland Conference until 1971, so all of Lamar's points prior to then do not count toward Southland Conference scoring. Joe Dumars, who is technically second on the list with 819 points, actually scored more career points than Lamar since McNeese was a member of the Southland Conference for the duration of Dumars' career. The above conference scoring leaders list uses overall career totals, not conference-career totals, as its criterion.
- Hank Gathers' scoring total in this table includes only games played for WCC member Loyola Marymount; he played his freshman season of 1985–86 at USC in what was then known as the Pacific-10 Conference. He transferred from USC after that season; after sitting out the 1986–87 season due to NCAA transfer rules, he played at Loyola Marymount until his death during his senior season in 1990.
- This player was active in the 2020–21 season but chose not to take advantage of the NCAA's COVID-19 eligibility waiver.
- Chaney is a Hall of Fame member as a coach, not as a player.
- Bethune–Cookman's career points record holders list puts Chaney at the top with "3,067+" because recordkeeping at the school during the 1950s was not as precise.
- After playing as a freshman in 2009–10, Haws spent two years on an LDS Church mission and did not play his sophomore season until 2012–13.
- Clark began his college career at LIU Brooklyn. After the 2018–19 season, Long Island University merged the athletic programs of its two main campuses, Brooklyn and Post. The merged LIU program inherited the history and records of the Brooklyn program in all sports that the Brooklyn campus had sponsored at the time of the merger, including men's basketball.
- Lacy played in 1943–44, fought in World War II, then finished his career from 1946 to 1949.
- Moore played his entire career at Pan American College, later known as the University of Texas–Pan American (UTPA). In 2013, UTPA and UT Brownsville were merged, with the new institution beginning operation as the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) in the 2015–16 academic year. The UTRGV athletic program inherited all history and records of the UTPA program.
- Toolson played at Utah Valley during the 2003–04 season before serving on an LDS Church mission to Guatemala from 2004 to 2006. He then returned to play for the Wolverines from 2006 to 2009.
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References
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