Frank Selvy’s 100 Points: The Greatest Scoring Night in NCAA History

It's teen fifty four. Wilt Chamberlain in his one hundred point game hasn't happened yet. Scoring a lot of points isn't very common, whether it's college or professional. But in Greenville, South Carolina, four thousand fans came out and saw Frank Sylvie, a Forum university, do something no one had ever done in Division one basketball as they took on Newberry College, scoring one hundred points, kept off by a forty foot buzzer beater, and is the only Division one player to ever score one hundred points in the game. Join us today find out who Frank was, and how this all happened in this crazy night, and why it's often forgot about the day on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I mean in Reese your guide, because I once hit a full court buzzer beater with five minutes left on the clock. So Frank Sylvie was born in Kentucky. It was actually named after FDR who was actually elected president the day before he was born. He was one of ten kids growing up in a two bedroom home, and by the age of twelve he actually worked as a migrant worker in Indiana picking tomatoes. He attended Corbin high school where he actually starred on the basketball team. Now, this would be closest to Hoosiers Ben. The landscape of basketball was very different. It was a different type of game, different field. The NBA wasn't what it was. It was just kind of all the different types. Okay, so being good on your basketball team what did actually mean a lot, even if you were in a small town. Even though he had limits to playing because he had to work, he ended up being the most valuable player for their team and would actually join in multiple All Star games for high school, which caught the attention of Forum University. Now. Forum was located in Greenville, South Carolina. But they weren't the biggest, they weren't the best. They were just a good team back in the day, even though now they're just a mediocre team that might make the tournament every now and then. And he was a two time South Conference Player of the Year. And he actually chose to go to for him because he was originally supposed to go to Kentucky, but when they saw he was only six foot and weighed almost nothing, they pulled a scholarship, and so he chose for him because he could only go to college if he collaged scholarship because his family had way too many kids and he didn't have a way to pay for But what happened was he grew three inches it was named the MVP of the Kentucky East West All Star Game. Kentucky offered him a scholarship after that game, he goes, nope, I'm gonna go put for him and also for him, recruited a couple of his players from his high school team made it a little bit easier. So he joins the team and he immediately goes off, averaging twenty four points per game his first year, leading them to an eighteen and six record. Next year, he averaged twenty nine points a game, leading them to a twenty one and six record. As a senior, he averaged over forty one points a game, leading them to a twenty and nine record, And this was a record at the time for the most points scored in the season until Pete Merrivich broke it back in nineteen sixty seven, and they mean the only two people to average more than forty points a game in Division One history. Over his career, he averaged over thirty points a f forum. But there is one game that really stood out It was the first one hundred point game that we had back in the day. So it was February thirteenth, nineteen fifty four, and Forum was playing Newbery College. Newberry College is a private arts school, not a Division one school. Has happened a lot more back in the day, and it still happens today where we see our big programs in the early season taking on small usually local teams around them to kind of warm them up like a preseason type game. But it actually counts for the regular season and their win totals. But we usually don't count these records. If they're not playing Division one talent, we don't count the records. Though, if you go now to see a Division three game and the players are shorter, the players are maybe not as fast, but they are still a good competition. So just playing just saying we don't count these because the lower competition is saying, come on, really, they're still really good competition. But Newberry wasn't up to Forums standards, especially not Frank Sylvie's as he went off in this game. And this was a big moment too, because this was also a live broadcast game, which was very uncommon back of the day, especially for college sports when it wasn't a big moment, so posters were posted all around Greenville. Four thousand bodies showed up, which is a lot for back then for the Southern Conference Player of the Year night, and there were people from his hometown making the six hour drive just to come see him play ball. And he was on fire this night. Now, before this night, the top scoring total was eighty five for any Division One player. They also were playing a lower level team, so it doesn't count in the overall rankings. When we talk about Division one records, the Division IE record for the most points scored in a Division One game where the Division One team is playing another Division one team is Kevin Bradshaw who was at US International facing Liola Marrimount, and just behind him was Pete Merrivick at LSU facing off against Alabama in nineteen seventy So those point totals are lower because they were playing better at competition. Paul Reason was the one that had the record before at eighty five for total back in nineteen forty nine, just five years earlier. So Frank knew this record, knew it well, and he knew he could beat it, and he had a hot game as the game tips off and he quickly scores ten, then fifteen, twenty. The crowd is going crazy. He hits twenty four points in the first quarter alone, putting Forum up big, and it wasn't a surprise. Forum was a much better team than the Newberry at this time, and they couldn't keep up with Frank. He was so smooth, so quick, they just could not do anything to slow him down. And by the time halftime came up Forham was leading sixty nine to thirty two, and Frank already had thirty seven points, which was the most he's ever scored in the first half. Everyone was excited. They wanted to keep him going, go for the most he can. This was the very first broadcast game in South Carolina and so they wanted to put on a show for everybody. So Sylvie came out in the third quarter and he moves his total up to sixty three by the end of the third quarter, a career high for him, and Newbury has no chance. Then in the fourth quarter he keeps going normally, So you hit your stars, let the other people come in. But this was on live TV. It was a huge moment and they wanted to continue, putting on a show. So Frank kept going and going, scoring seventy seventy five. And through all this it wasn't show voting. It was just Hibs focus on scoring, and every basket that went in, the crowd continued to cheer, and no one thought one hundred points as possible. No one had done that before. So we headed into the fourth. It's ninety five to fifty nine. He already has sixty three points and he continues to go. Remind you, this is nineteen fifty four. There is no three point line. This is all twos and free throws. And he's not a tall guy. He's doing this through shooting drives. He's not dominating down low because he's just a big man. No, he is dominating in every aspect, shooting the ball, grabbing rebounds, pushing the tempo, hitting every single shot. And as he creeps up, he eventually passes Paul a Reason for the NCAA Division One record for the most points scored in the game. And he gets it all the way up to ninety eight, which is a few seconds left, and he gets the rebound. As the time is about to expire, he heaves a forty foot buzzer beater and hits it. It's only worth two at the time because there's no three pointer, but this is a crazy way to get to one hundred points off a buzzer beater. But luckily it was filmed and we can see moments of this, which is great because the other one hundred point game that always gets to the attention Bilt Chamberlain, we never got to see it because it wasn't on TV, So it's amazing that we got to see this one. But it's often forgot about because it was against a non Division one opponent, so the record doesn't really stand in the official Division one records, but it really put him on the map in so many ways. He ended up being the number one overall pick in the NBA in the nineteen fifty four drafts to the Baltimore Bullets and went on to play nine seasons in the NBA because he had also during his time in the NBA served in the US Army, and he was best known for his time playing with Jerry Rest and Elgin Baylor. While he played with the Lakers, he was a two time All Star. He ended up being a consistent All American two times, a two time scoring champ, and a two time Conference Player of the Year champ, and Fordham would retire his number twenty eight jersey and he is in the Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. And you know what's crazy. After he retired from the NBA, he went back to Fordham to become a coach as an assistant for two years, then took over as the head coach for four years. Sadly, they weren't very good years. He had losing record every year but one he had a five hundred record. But it was a unique opportunity because he caught to coach one of his brothers on the team. And after this he would go on to work at a paper company for twenty five years. And we'll retire and pass away sadly in two thousand and four, at the age in ninety one. He made his mark not only in basketball. He showed that we can score like crazy and that you can find talent anywhere, because growing up in nowhere, Kentucky with a huge family doesn't mean you can't make it in basketball, and it doesn't mean basketball has to be your whole career. A lot of times we think of player retires they got to go into TV, They gotta go in coaching. That's all they can do. After this, he went in to work for twenty five years at a paper company that wasn't under Mifflin, but ended up having a great life, mainly based off his one hundred point game. I want to thank you for listening to today's daily sports history. If you like this, please make sure you share it with a friend. Hit that little square arrow button that you see wherever you are doing things on your phone, share it or do it on your computer. That way others can find us and you guys can talk about Frank and the craziness of scoring one hundred points without a three pointer because it happened back in the day. And we'll see you on the next one.