“You find yourself forgetting the game, and just watching him. He’s not just a shooter. He’s everything.’’
That’s how St. John’s coach Lou Carnesecca described LSU guard Pete Maravich to the New York Daily News in March 1970. By then, the Pistol Pete show had zipped across the South, and beelined its way to Madison Square Garden for the NIT — back when the NIT was a big deal. Thousands of fans and curiosity seekers followed the all-time leading scorer in NCAA basketball history, who ticked off record markers like a to-do list. He skipped past Elvin Hayes on the scoring charts, bypassed Oscar Robertson for the top of the list, crossed the 3,000-point barrier, and eventually settled on a scoring mark that has stood for more than 50 years.
Caitlin Clark is about to pass it.
This simple fact will ignite discourse across an aisle nearly as wide as any you’ll find in Washington D.C. On the one side, folks will begrudge Clark her spot at the top. They will argue that not only did Maravich not have the benefit of the 3-point line that Clark has used to accrue 1,461 of her 3,569 career points, he was not eligible by NCAA rules at the time to participate as a freshman. The 741 points Maravich scored on LSU’s freshman team aren’t part of his 3,667 total. On the other…
