Which Athletes Scored The Most Points In March Madness History?

May 2024 · 2 minute read

University of Tennessee's Chamique Holdsclaw outdid Christian Laettner in more ways than one. For starters, she has 479 points to his 407 as the leading career scorer in the women's tournament. She also has one more title than Laettner, as the Volunteers won three NCAA Division I women's basketball championships during her time with the team. And while Laettner won the tournament's Most Outstanding Player award once, in 1991, Holdsclaw did it twice, bagging the award in 1997 and 1998. There's no denying that she was one of the most dominant players in women's college basketball history, and some even referred to her as the "female Michael Jordan."

That's practically the highest form of praise for any female basketball player, though the comparison was a bit of a stretch in some ways — Jordan was a 6-foot-6-inch shooting guard, while Holdsclaw was a 6-foot-2-inch forward. She was, however, a superstar in her own right in the pros, as she played in six All-Star Games after being selected with the top pick by the Washington Mystics in the 1999 WNBA Draft. Holdsclaw finished her WNBA career with averages of 16.9 points, 7.6 rebounds, 2.5 assists, and 1.3 steals across 10 seasons, per Basketball-Reference. She was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018.

While Holdsclaw was certainly a decorated college basketball player, there's one notable March Madness record she doesn't hold — the single-game scoring record. During a 1982 game against the Maryland Terrapins, Lorri Bauman of the Drake Bulldogs scored 50 points, and no one has topped that in the four decades since.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qL7Up56eZpOkunCEj2pwcm5frLWqr8dmmK2gnJrBpr%2BMrJqoqpWZerW0xGakqKukYr2wtc2tqmahnmK6or7CoWSmmZSjsrS%2FjKGgrKyfp8Zw