100

Justin's first story for Sports Illustrated:

His mother. He wanted the number because of her. She had never seen him play, so he decided that if he scored 100 points on the night she was in the stands, she might come to understand him, or at least never have any doubt about how good he was. Almost 59 years ago in the middle of February, Frank Selvy's mother rode the L&N Railroad from Corbin, Ky., to Greenville, S.C. She sat in a gym on the second floor of Furman's Textile Hall for a basketball game against Newberry College, the first and only one of his games she would ever see. Frank was a 6'3" senior center. His nickname was the Corbin Comet. He was so fast that it took only two seconds for him to score the first basket, off the opening tip. He looked for his mother in the crowd. Iva Selvy had raised 10 children in a wooden house with a coal stove while her husband went to work in a coal mine. As the game progressed, Frank scored so often that the fans rattled the bleachers each time he touched the ball, thumping the floor with their shoes. The P.A. announcer called out his increasing point total, as if in expectation. At one point his coach sat the other four starters and told everyone else to pass Frank the ball. He felt magical that night. He was hitting hook shots as though he were still practicing on the goal he had made out of wood and planted on top of a hill near his house. Frank took the last shot of the game too, a running one-hander, with Furman up by 52. He was just past midcourt, three players from Newberry around him. He had 98 points, the most anyone had ever scored in a Division I game. The ball left his fingers as the clock expired. He would be named first-team All-America, would be picked No. 1 in the 1954 NBA draft, would play nine seasons in the pros and then work 25 years in sales for the St. Joe Paper Company in Laurens, S.C. After the game he was carried around the court on the shoulders of a mob, oblivious to what the number would eventually mean. The ball had gone in. And he would live with 100 forever.