Mountain sharpshooter could break state’s single-season record for three-pointers at Tates Creek

A few boys’ basketball notes heading into the final weekend of the regular season:

▪  Entering Thursday, only one boys’ or girls’ player had scored 1,000 points this season — Lawrence County’s Tim Dalton, who leads the nation at 37.9 points per game according to MaxPreps’ rankings. He became the 19th Kentucky boy to record 1,000 points in a single season.

Dalton had scored 1,142 points heading into the Bulldogs’ 60th District opener versus Phelps, which is the sixth-highest single season output by any boys’ player and the most in nearly 30 years. Ahead of him are: 1. Kelly Coleman, Wayland (1,734 in 1965); 2. Ervin Stepp, Phelps (1,449 in 1980); 3. Stepp, Phelps (1,275 in 1979); 4. Chris Harrison, Tollesboro (1,182 in 1991); 5.) Coleman, Wayland (1,174 in 1955).

▪  Johnson Central’s Mason Blair, the nation’s fourth-leading scorer on MaxPreps (32.3 ppg), needs to make just one three-pointer at Tates Creek on Friday to break the state’s single-season record for threes made. He matched the record of 145 set by Tollesboro’s Harrison in 1991 by making five threes in a 64-61 win over Ashland Blazer on Saturday, the Golden Eagles’ ninth straight victory. Blair, who averages five makes from long range per game, is 96 points away from a 1,000-point season.

▪  Peyton Broughton, a 3,000-point scorer at North Laurel who’s signed with Eastern Kentucky University, also is knocking on the door of a 1,000-point season. Broughton, who’s averaging 30.9 points, had 865 points entering the Jaguars’ regular-season finale at Knox Central on Friday.

▪  One reason Jake Duby was able to become Sayre’s all-time leading scorer? Free-throw shooting. The senior had connected on 114 of his 126 attempts coming into the week. That’s a 90.5 percent clip, third-highest in the state. Only two other players in the state are making 90 percent of their free throws — Paintsville eighth-grader Mason Moore, who’d went 58-of-64 (90.6 percent) from the stripe, and Madisonville senior Noah Cunningham, who’d connected on 75 of 82 (91.5 percent).

▪  Turns out if you’re at Sayre, it doesn’t hurt to have a Goodman on the roster. Rob Goodman, now the head coach of the boys’ team, was on a Spartans squad that won 20 games in 1989. His son, Robbie Goodman, is a senior on this year’s edition, the first to win 20 games since the 1992-93 team tied the school record of 22 wins set by the program in the mid-’80s. Only four teams in school history have won 20 or more games.

This story was originally published February 16, 2017 at 3:12 PM with the headline "Mountain sharpshooter could break state’s single-season record for three-pointers at Tates Creek."