I’ve been working on this article for a while, and while college basketball is over and done with for the season, I still think this is one of the more interesting and intriguing games played in the history of college basketball. May I present to you, the 1992 DeVry vs Troy State basketball game, which currently holds the NCAA records for 1. Most points scored by a single team in one half (135) 2. The most points scored by both teams (399) and 3. Most 3 pointers made and attempted combined (51/109).
Most people have accepted the final score of 258-141, with Troy State being the dominating winner, but I, as well as Jon Bois, Creative Director at SB Nation, disagree with this final score.
He says the score is actually 253-141, which is fine, but I also believe that that score is incorrect. I’ll get back to that later, but first I’m going to talk about the game.
A little backstory
This game, holy cow, is incredible. I watched it 5 times on YouTube and I’m still amazed. DeVry, as most of you know, (or don’t, they’re not really talked about much anymore) is a for-profit school with numerous campuses around the world. They’re not necessarily a sporting school, mostly just for education. In fact, they only really have sporting clubs that aren’t affiliated with the NCAA or any other nationally-recognized college sport organization.
How, if that’s the case, did they play Troy State for a game that counts for both teams’ seasons? Troy State is (at this point in time in 1992) a NCAA Division II school, why are they playing each other?
That’s because DeVry University of Atlanta’s basketball team was considered NAIA Division II, which was basically 7 guys (Yes, only 7) and a coach going out having fun and trying to win a few games. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it’s just more of a club-league team than an actual college basketball program.
Anyways, both programs ran a “run-n-gun” style offense, which means the second the ball touched your hands, you either ran up the court and shot, passed the ball up the court for a shot, or shot from a stationary position. There is hardly any genuine strategy, and it’s mostly just shooters taking their shot with little regard for a genuine game plan, but what it is good for is a lot of shots and a lot of points.
Why the score is wrong.
Jon Bois has already said this. 258-141 is not the correct score. He’s going to explain that in his video I linked above. His final score, is 253-141.
I think he’s also wrong.
I’ve watched this game a total of 5 times. That’s about 4 more times than you should watch it to be amazed. My final score is 252-141. These aren’t significant differences, and they don’t remove the fact that Troy State would be holding an NCAA record. I just feel like if the record is to be held, then it should at least be held accurately.
There are a few times where the scorekeepers counted the score incorrectly, due to Troy State passing 200 points because most (if not all) scoreboards the max amount of points one team can physically show is 199 since it’s highly unlikely (but not impossible) to score 200+ points.
With how fast the game was moving, and a few incorrect and menial mistakes made on part of the scorekeepers and announcers, they end up with 258. However, after multiple viewings of this game, I come up with 252. Why’s that? Well, I’m not quite sure. I’ve watched Jon’s video in conjunction with the actual game footage, and I can see no distinction on where the mistake occurs. I can simply just see that I believe Troy State scored one less point than he does.
Does that mean me, a simple college student at a Division II university in the middle of Kansas, has more knowledge of a game than a guy who’s literally paid to do stuff like this for a living? No. Not at all. In fact, I’m possibly wrong.
However, I do believe there was a mistake somewhere, and I know for certain there was a mistake on the part of the scorekeepers and announcers on that fateful day in 1992.
From the grainy, glitchy footage that both Jon and I have seen, we can never be 100% sure that the game will ever be scored correctly, but regardless history was made, and history will stay that way until the end of time.