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Crazy, But True: One Guy Scores 138 Points, Breaking NCAA Hoops Record

Going for the record: Grinnell College's Jack Taylor during Tuesday night's game, in which he scored 138 points.
Cory Hall/Grinnell College
/
AP
Going for the record: Grinnell College's Jack Taylor during Tuesday night's game, in which he scored 138 points.

We are not making this up:

Sophomore guard Jack Taylor of Iowa's Grinnell College scored 138 points Tuesday night, an NCAA record, during his team's 179-104 victory over Faith Baptist Bible College.

"I am very exhausted," he said, not too surprisingly, after the game.

Let's run some of the numbers:

-- The old record, 113 points, was set by NCAA Division II player Clarence "Bevo" Francis of Rio Grande in 1954, according to Grinnell's Pioneer Athletics website.

-- Taylor, reports The Des Moines Register, played 36 of the game's 40 minutes. During his time on the court, he launched 108 shots. That's one every 20 seconds, by our count.

-- Taylor sank 52 of those shots from the court. They included 27 three-pointers.

-- He only went to the foul line 10 times, and sank 7 of those one-pointers.

According to the Register, coach David Arseneault, "now in his 24th year at Grinnell, is known for starting a scoring revolution. His teams fire 3-point shots at will, and substitutes move swiftly into the game like hockey line shifts. In 2011, Grinnell's Griffin Lentsch set an NCAA Division III single-game scoring record with 89 points in a game against Principia."

There's video here of Taylor in action.

Meanwhile, Faith Baptist's David Larson scored 70 points in his team's losing effort. And his school's website says that's a Faith Baptist record.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.

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