Pistol Pete Maravichs NCAA scoring record could fall. How should we feel about it?

May 2024 · 7 minute read

DETROIT — After Tuesday night’s game at Detroit Mercy, Antoine Davis sat a few rows off the court at Calihan Hall repeating the name: “Pistol Pete, man. Pistol Pete.”

Davis was still in uniform. Another night, another scoring blitz. This time, 38 points against Purdue Fort Wayne. Detroit Mercy won, advancing to the next round of the Horizon League tournament and what appears to be the possible anticlimactic fall of one of sports’ supposed unbreakable records.

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As of now, Davis is 25 points shy of tying Pete Maravich’s NCAA men’s scoring mark of 3,667 points. If the fifth-year senior scores 26 against Youngstown State on Thursday night, a record that’s stood for 53 years will fall. Davis is averaging 34.4 points and 5.6 made 3s over his last nine games. This feels inevitable.

And that’s tough for some to stomach. While Maravich’s record career scoring average of 44.2 points per game will never be touched, his total points mark was always vulnerable to unforeseen circumstances.

That future has come to pass.

Davis’ 3,642 points have come in 143 career games, a tally bolstered by the NCAA granting student-athletes a fifth year of eligibility in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Maravich played 83 games at LSU.

And of Davis’ 3,642 points, a bulk have come from the 3-point line. His 584 made 3s is also an NCAA record.

Maravich played before the introduction of the 3-point line. It’s been estimated his scoring record might’ve climbed to more than 4,500 points with an arc.

But there’s something more at play here. It’s the Maravich mystique. Pistol Pete holds a place in American lore. It’s a byproduct of who he was — the hair, the socks, the before-his-time playing style — and his premature death at age 40 of heart failure. A certain class of athlete exists in this kind of air. Steve Prefontaine. Roberto Clemente. Maravich.

Antoine Davis, meanwhile, is a 6-foot-1, 165-pound guard who’s spent the last five years playing in relative anonymity at a small Jesuit school in northwest Detroit.

The idea of Antoine Davis passing Pete Maravich is … awkward.

Even Mike Davis, Antoine’s father and fifth-year head coach at Detroit Mercy, is trying to square it.

“I’m so proud that he can even be said in the same breath with Pistol Pete, cause, man, you know Pistol Pete, I know Pistol Pete, and there’s no player more special than Pistol Pete,” Mike said. “But fact is, that was a different generation. I wish they had records for then, and records for now, because I’m torn by it. Really. I loved Pistol Pete. I used his videos to train Antoine for goodness sake.”

Antoine Davis is averaging 28.4 points per game this season for Detroit Mercy, which is 14-18. (Michael Hickey / Getty Images)

That’s the thing about Maravich. Breaking his record feels like breaking the myth.

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Even the circumstances of his record falling come with a degree of Pistol-ian eeriness.

What if, for instance, Maravich had played one more game at LSU? Would this record still be out of reach?

It could’ve happened. Back in 1970, the Bayou Tigers were in Manhattan for Maravich’s much-anticipated debut at Madison Square Garden. Standing-room-only crowds came to see him in the postseason National Invitational Tournament. (Like Antoine Davis, Maravich never played in the NCAA Tournament.)

At the time, the entire 32-team NIT was played at the Garden. Maravich was already a legend, having shattered Oscar Robertson’s college scoring record of 2,973 points earlier in the season, and was arguably the most famous basketball player around. He was considering seven-figure pro contracts from the NBA, ABA and the Harlem Globetrotters.

Maravich scored 20 in the NIT opener against Georgetown, dazzling fans with a few passes, but was muzzled by a triangle-and-two defense guarding him with a constant double-team. The next game, he responded with 37 in a win over Oklahoma.

Next came the NIT semifinals between LSU and Marquette. Al McGuire decided to defend Maravich with not two players, but three. Marquette grabbed and swarmed and bodied Maravich all over the floor. He was again held to a measly 20 and LSU fell in a 101-79 rout. One of Maravich’s final postgame quotes as a collegian was: “I stunk.”

LSU was scheduled to play Army in the NIT consolation game, but Maravich never wore the purple and gold again. He had been playing with a strained ligament in his left ankle and a bruised hip and decided to skip the runner-up affair. If LSU had advanced to the NIT finals against St. John’s it’s a safe bet Pete would’ve kept playing and kept scoring.

Instead, Press Maravich, Pete’s father and LSU head coach, was quoted as saying his son’s pro stock wasn’t worth risking.

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So that’s how Pete Maravich’s college career ended. After playing virtually every minute of every game, and averaging 38.1 shots per night, he sat courtside at the Garden as the Tigers fell again, 75-69, to the Cadets. In hindsight, you wonder what could’ve been. Imagine college basketball’s most unconventional player going against an Army team coached by a 29-year-old Robert Montgomery Knight.

But, alas. It didn’t happen. And Maravich’s record remained locked in time at 3,667.

Even Press Maravich said it wouldn’t stand forever.

“I think someday — I don’t know how soon — some of these young kids will come along and score the points,” he told reporters in early February 1970 after Pistol broke Robertson’s record with a 53-point night against Ole Miss. “But Pete’s name will be in the record books for the next 30-40 years.”

Turns out, it lasted more than five decades. A testament to a player who defied all reason. It’s worth remembering, playing in the days before freshman varsity eligibility, Maravich scored 741 points in 19 games in his first year at LSU — a 39.0 ppg average for the Tigers’ freshman team.

“I mean, the numbers are crazy, right?” Antoine said Tuesday. “All those points, in three years, no 3-point line? Incredible.”

Maybe all the time we’ve spent saying the record was unbreakable clouded the reality that perhaps Maravich’s record was meant to be broken. And maybe Antoine Davis was the one to do it. For all that is different about them and their situations, there’s an odd symmetry between the two.

Davis plays with style and puts on a show. Pull-up 3s falling left, falling right, falling backward. Real flair. He understands what it means to play for fans.

Pistol? He was basketball’s greatest virtuoso. As a senior at LSU, he said, “Basketball to me is show business.”

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Davis is the son of a coach who trained him to operate with a pulse set to practice. Since he was 14, he’s taken anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 shots per day and was home-schooled as a kid, in part, to focus on training. His dad’s coaching style has been befitting of such work. Antoine has had absolute trust and an unchecked green light.

Pistol? His dad drilled him endlessly. The stories are legendary. Pete occasionally dribbled a ball beside the open door of the family car while his dad drove. At LSU, Press let Pete go like a balloon in the wind.

And there’s one more twist.

As it turns out, according to the biography “Maravich,” back in 1945, Press Maravich, fresh out of the service, was considering a career as a commercial airplane pilot. But previously a big-time scorer at tiny Davis & Elkins College in the Appalachian foothills, he still itched to play basketball. He decided to take one last run at the game, signing a pro contract that was short-lived but led him to coaching. That, in turn, led to Press raising his son, Pete, in basketball.

History pivoted because Press signed with a team based in … Youngstown, Ohio.

The same town Antoine Davis will roll into Thursday with college basketball’s greatest record in his sights.

Coincidence? Surely, but in the measures of college basketball history, it’s just as much of a coincidence that Maravich and Davis are the game’s Nos. 1 and 2 scorers, regardless of order. If Davis breaks the record, it’s his record — a feat that should be celebrated, not discounted or discredited just because it’s different than how Maravich did it.

That doesn’t take away from a myth. If anything, it starts one anew.

(Top photo of Pete Maravich: Rich Clarkson / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)

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