Thousands of Notable College Basketball Player Seasons from Early 20th Century Added
The men's statistical data on College Basketball Reference is generally limited to the era since 1947-48. That was the first season in which schools were required to send final stat sheets to NCAA headquarters so that official national leaderboards could be compiled. Before this, unofficial leaderboards were compiled in yearly record books, but the scans with stats for all teams are generally not as easy to locate. Nonetheless, many of the most important players in the history of college basketball played before 1947-48, so we have made an effort to cover as many of these players as possible. We are proud to announce that we have added data for over 2,500 player seasons (covering over 1,500 players) from 1911-12 through 1947-48 to our database.
Some of the notable figures in this new or expanded data include John Wooden, Leroy Edwards, Kenny Sailors, Bob Kurland, George Mikan, Ernie Calverley, George Senesky, Hank Luisetti, Alex Groza, Ralph Beard, Ed Macauley, Don Barksdale, Frankie Brian, 1950 American League Rookie of the Year Walt Dropo, Vince Boryla, Tony Lavelli, Pro Football Hall of Famer Otto Graham, Arnie Risen, Bobby Wanzer, Charley Hyatt, Vern Mikkelsen, Larry Foust, Slater Martin, Paul Hoffman, Jim Pollard, Andy Phillip, Alex Hannum, Red Holzman, Bob Cousy, Bob Davies, Branch McCracken, Ralph Miller, Dolph Schayes, Bones McKinney, Howie Dallmar, Bennie Oosterbaan, Bud Grant, Max Zaslofsky, Frank Broyles, Frank McGuire, Dick McGuire, Taps Gallagher, Bill Sharman, Jud Heathcote and 1950 National League MVP Jim Konstanty, among many others.
One thing to bear in mind is how bare bones statistical coverage generally was in this era. Most of these players (though not all!) have data for games played, points, field goals made, free throws made and free throws attempted. Some also have data on personal fouls and field goals attempted. In rare instances, these players may have minutes played, games started or rebounds. About half of the players have height and position data. We have some uniform number data for a small subset of these players, as well. Another wrinkle to mention about these statistics is that in some of the earlier years in this dataset, schools would track statistics for conference games, but not for non-conference games.
We would like to thank Kevin Johnson for working on this update for us. Please keep your eyes peeled for further enhancements in the future.