Rousing Rowsey: Obscure Big South Freshman Joins Little-Known Scoring List
"Good habits formed at youth make all the difference." - Aristotle
Andrew Rowsey isn't a card-carrying member of the freshman watch list the national media regularly drools on. But Rowsey, adhering to Aristotle's admonition about forming good habits, is on a short list of yearlings who had an early explosion, tying UNC Asheville's DI single-game scoring record with 41 points at Radford.
The Big South Conference boasted a comparable high-scoring freshman in 2008-09 when Liberty's Seth Curry contributed 102 three-pointers to finish with an average of 20.2 ppg before he transferred to Duke. Rowsey, hitting more than 40% of his shots from beyond the arc, is on pace to challenge Curry's freshman total for treys. Many power league members are in dire need of outside marksmen. Could Rowsey, despite scoring only two points at Duke in non-league competition, be the next Curry moving up to a major university after proving himself at the mid-major level?
One of the single-game scoring marks for an NCAA Division I school set by a freshman goes back nearly 100 years and another came courtesy of a current coach in the ACC (Virginia's Tony Bennett). Following is a chronological list Virginia native Rowsey joined of the modest number of 10 different freshmen who established existing school single-game scoring records at the DI level (Austin Peay's Fly Williams tied his own mark):
School | Frosh Record Holder | HG | Opponent | Date |
---|---|---|---|---|
Toledo | Clarke "Pinky" Pittenger | 49 | Bluffton (Ohio) | 12-13-18 |
Centenary | Robert Parish | 50 | Lamar | 12-12-72 |
Austin Peay | James "Fly" Williams | 51 | Georgia Southern | 12-30-72 |
Austin Peay | James "Fly" Williams | 51 | Tennessee Tech | 1-20-73 |
Green Bay | Tony Bennett | 44 | Cleveland State | 2-11-89 |
Mississippi Valley State | Alphonso Ford | 51 | Texas Southern | 2-19-90 |
Lipscomb | Jeff Dancy | 38 | Tennessee State | 1-14-02 |
Albany | Jamar Wilson | 39 | New Hampshire | 2-16-03 |
Eastern Washington | Rodney Stuckey | 45 | Northern Arizona | 1-5-06 |
Kennesaw State | Andre Morgan | 35 | North Florida | 2-3-06 |
UNC Asheville | Andrew Rowsey | 41 | Radford | 2-13-14 |