McCarty Is All-Time Single Game Scoring Leader With 57

Last week’s column was about Waveland’s high-scoring Mike Michael who became the first Montgomery basketball player to post a 50-plus point scoring night after he tallied 51 points during the 1966-67 season against Roachdale.

I said last week he was one of two players to ever hit the 50-point barrier, and that this week we would announce who the second player was. Well, it wasn’t a very big secret as people began naming that player a week ago.

Of course, that second player to reach that mark is none other than Crawfordsville’s Matt McCarty.

I had a little connection with Mike Mitchell having been able to coach his boys in American Legion baseball and also covering them during their high school careers.

Matt is a different story as I have known him and his family for a very long time and consider them all to be good friends.

I remember McCarty’s game like it was yesterday. It was on a Friday night (Jan. 28, 1994). It was just the sixth game played in the new Crawfordsville gym, and the game was a Sagamore Conference matchup against a very strong Frankfort team.

McCarty came into the game that night averaging just under 30 points a game and he scored eight points in the first quarter. By halftime he had scored 21 points.

It was the second half when he really got hot and stole the show. He tossed in 10 more points during the third quarter. He saved the best for last as he erupted for 18 in the fourth quarter before the game went into overtime. In the extra session he scored eight more points and ended the night with 57 of the team’s 99 points in a 103-99 loss to the Hot Dogs.

McCarty totaled 36 points after halftime alone. Crawfordsville managed to score 58 as a team.

According to records compiled by Bob Whalen, who was known as the historian of Montgomery County basketball, the existing record up to that point was 48 points set by John Green during the 1912-13 season in the old YMCA Gym, where the current PNC Bank building sits. Green reached that mark in an 80-17 win over Terre Haute Wiley.

McCarty also held the scoring record for the most points in the old Crawfordsville Gym, which is now the Athena Center. He set that mark with 42 in a 97-83 win against Central Catholic his junior season, and broke Dick Wilkerson’s record of 39 points scored as a senior in the 1960-61 season.

McCarty played just three years for the Athenians and ended with 1,410 points, good for second on the school’s all-time scoring list behind Matt Petty. Petty ended his career at Crawfordsville with 1,608 points in his four years there.

McCarty scored 282 points as a sophomore and then scored 409 as a junior, second to teammate Darren Haas who scored 441 points that year. McCarty’s senior year was one for the record book. He totaled a school and county record of 719 points. Only one other player has ever scored 700 points in a season and that was Waveland’s Bill Greve in 1954-55. Greve also had a 606-point season in 1953-54 and ended with 1,777 career points — currently third-most on Montgomery County’s all-time list.

McCarty’s low game his senior season was 20 points. He had 12 games with more than 30 points, including games scoring 40, 47 and 57 points. He still holds five of the top seven single-game scoring records at Crawfordsville High School.

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I’ve received good feedback from the column published last week.

• I was contacted by Paul Lichtenstein who has a great website listing everyone from each state to score at least 47 points (www.luckyshow.org/basketball/USHighHigh.htm). He may have led me to some information as to whether or not Wingate’s Homer Stonebraker scored 74 or 75 (or maybe even 80) points in a game. I see some deep research coming sometime soon.

• I was told that in Mike Mitchell’s 51-point game he was 17-of-20 from the floor, and Phil Myers, who scored 32 points in that game, was 8-of-11. The remainder of the team shot 1-of-17.

• I also received confirmation that the 42 points scored by Roachdale’s Don Simpson in the same game Mitchell scored 51 was a school record, meaning both players set school records on the same night.

• Mitchell liked playing Roachdale. He scored 35 points against them the following year.

Thanks for responding and keep the comments coming.