Jan. 31, 1970

The Pistol is a machine-gun scorer. He averaged 43.8 as a sophomore and 44.2 as a junior, and with 14 games left in his senior season at LSU, Pete Maravich needs just 40 points to break Oscar Robertson's NCAA career record of 2,973.

The slender 6-foot-5 guard scores 25 points in the first half against Mississippi in Baton Rouge. When he hits a 23-foot jump shot from the corner with 4:42 left in the game to give him the record, an overflow crowd of more than 11,000 in the LSU Coliseum goes wild. The game is stopped and the ball is given to the Pistol.

Maravich goes on to score 12 more points in LSU's 109-86 victory to finish the game with 53 and 2,987 for 2½ seasons.

The 21-year-old Maravich, whose tousled haircut and floppy socks are his trademarks on the court, will finish his three-time All-American career with 3,667 points and 44.2 average, both records that will endure through the 20th century. (And, remember, the long-range shooting Pistol scored all his points before the three-point field goal was introduced.)