May 4, 2009
By Ed McGranahan, The Greenville News
Never say never, but 100 points in a college basketball game by a single player would seem to be one of those potentially "unbreakable" records like DiMaggio's hitting streak in baseball.
Frank Selvy scored 100 for Furman University 55 years ago in Greenville against Newberry College, and Monday he will enter the Southern Conference Athletic Hall of Fame as a charter member figuring his legacy is secure.
"I don't think so," said Selvy recently when asked if he thought the record would fall, "Maybe it could have been back then, but now I don't think so."
Only two other players have scored as many points in either college or professional game, but this discussion pertains specifically to NCAA Division I basketball and Selvy set the record on Feb. 13, 1954 at Textile Hall, which was on West Washington Street near St. Mary's Catholic Church.
Albert "Bevo" Francis, playing for Rio Grande, a NAIA college in Ohio, had scored 116 against a junior college a year earlier and 113 against Hillsdale 11 days before the Furman-Newberry game. The NCAA recognizes Selvy's as the major college record. And make no mistake, Furman was a major player in college basketball.
Until his senior season the Southern Conference included the seven schools including Clemson, Duke and North Carolina that formed the Atlantic Coast Conference, so Furman whipped some pretty salty teams during Selvy's career.
For decades Selvy has modestly insisted that people don't remember much about him or those Furman teams other than the one game, and the record has withstood the test of time.
In 1978 Freeman Williams of Portland State scored 81 but nobody else has been close. Of course the game has changed, the players have changed and the way they play barely resembles basketball of Selvy's era.
"The players are so much more athletic," he said. "I don't think their skills are much better as far as passing and shooting, but they're so much quicker."
The most prolific scorer of his generation, Selvy twice led the nation in scoring including a record 41.7 points per game in 1953-54. Pete Maravich, who spent his formative years down the road when his father coached at Clemson University, trumped it three times, but only one other player (Johnny Neumann of Ole Miss) has averaged 40 points in a season.
Selvy said Maravich might have been best equipped to score 100 because, but he believes that today it would require a player of size, strength and skill comparable to LeBron James.
At 6-foot-3 Selvy was considered tall. He started playing near the basket until his junior season when he convinced Alley to let him bring the ball up court against a stubborn Duke press.
"I was basically a post player in high school and my first two years at Furman," he said. "If I had a smaller guy on me I'd go to the low post, if I had a bigger guy I'd go high, take him outside a little bit."
Selvy was a versatile shooter - "my favorite shot was right at the basket," he said with deprecating humor - but he could be deadly with a little fade jumper or a hook with either hand crossing the lane.
"It they'd had the three-point shot back when I played, I'd (have) shot it all the time," he said, laughing.
After serving in the military he went on to a nine-year career in the NBA largely with the Los Angeles Lakers where as a role player to Jerry West and Elgin Baylor.
Selvy plays a good bit of golf and most of the basketball he watches is the college game although. "I don't like the college game today the way they let them play."
"The body bumping and hand checking and arm checking. There are so many fouls committed that they just can't call them all."
Selvy said another reason he doesn't see the record falling is that either defenses or a player's teammates may not allow him that many opportunities to score.
He took 66 shots that night against Newberry and made 41, including one at the buzzer.
"It may hold up forever," he said, "the way the game is going now."
