Mizzou honors Joe Scott 60 years after his record-setting night

Joe Scott is being honored this weekend in Columbia by the University of Missouri as part of the 2021 Class to the Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame.

The Poplar Bluff resident is among 10 former Tigers to be honored during a private ceremony Friday night at the Tiger Hotel and again today at the football game between Mizzou and Tennessee.

Scott played basketball for the Tigers and finished fourth with 1,106 career points during his three varsity years 1959-61 that included a single-game record 46 points.

Now 60 years after that historic night, no Missouri basketball player has been able to match it, let alone surpass it.

“I never dreamed the record would still be there today with all the great players they’ve had,” Scott said in a 2004 story which can be read here.

Scott was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2013 and recognized again three years later for his lifetime of community contributions to local youth sports.

Mizzou announced Thursday that Scott was apart of the school’s 31st induction class since the hall of fame started in 1990.

“Surprised Joe Scott wasn’t in the Missouri HoF,” tweeted Dave Matter, who has covered Mizzou athletics for two decades. “Only holds the MU single-game scoring record, 46 vs. Nebraska in 1961. The pride of Gainesville, Mo.”

Growing up in tiny Gainesville, located 40 miles east of Branson, Scott averaged 31.5 points his senior year. His 1,104 points during the 1956-57 season still ranks third-most in MSHSAA history.

“The Gainesville Gunner” as he became to be known, was a 6-foot-4 shooter that led the Bulldogs to a fourth-place finish in Class M his senior year.

At Mizzou, Scott played for coach Sparky Stalcup and had his best scoring average as a junior with 18.4 points per game. As a senior, Scott averaged 16.5 points, second on the team for a second straight year, as the Tigers finished 8-15, winning their last three games.

One of those was Monday, March 6, 1961 at Brewer Fieldhouse against a Nebraska team that had won the previous meetings by 14 and 18 points.

Scott sank 18 of 30 field goals and was 10 of 13 from the free-throw line, going on a seven-minute span in which he scored 16 points on seven consecutive shots early in the second half. He didn’t realize that his basket with 39 seconds left broke the team’s scoring record set four years earlier by Lionel Smith.

The Tigers won 97-76, also setting a team record for points in a game.

“It was just one of those nights when you’re really on,” Scott said in 2004. “You expect every shot to go in and when you miss, you can’t understand it. You’re just in a zone. Of course, it’s an awful lot of fun when they’re going in like that.”

In the 60 years since, eight players have scored 41 or more points including a 43-point game by Willie Smith in the 1976 NCAA tournament, Anthony Peeler’s 43-point game in 1992 at Kansas and Doug Smith’s 44-point game in 1990 against Nebraska.

Scott was at that game when Smith missed a shot to match the record and then fouled out. Smith’s 19 field goals set a team record, surpassing Scott’s 18 that was matched twice by Willie Smith and once by John Brown.

Scott currently ranks 35th all-time in Mizzou scoring history, doing it without a 3-point line or the shot clock.

College basketball has dramatically changed in the last six years, let along 60.

That Scott’s single-game record has stood the test of time is pretty amazing. It’s not like the 100 points Furman’s Frank Selvy scored in 1954 or Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point night in the NBA.

Remember what Yogi Berra said when somebody broke one of his records:

“I knew the record would stand until it was broken.”