Can Mel Thomas Break Diana Taurasi’s Career 3 Pointers Made Record?

So here is something interesting that I started to think about when I was perusing the UCONN Women’s Basketball Media Guide the other day. I got to thinking about whether or not Mel Thomas could break Diana Taurasi’s career 3 pointers made record. So I started to crunch some numbers and this is what I came up with.

• Taurasi has 318 career 3 point shots made.
• Thomas currently has 158 career 3 point shots made thru 2/2/07. This puts her almost halfway to breaking the record.
• Thru 85 career games, Thomas currently averages 1.85 three point shots made per game.
• There are 9 games remaining in the regular season with 3 possible Big East Tournament games and 6 possible NCAA Tournament games. Plus there will probably be 30 regular season games next year along with the Big East Tournament games and the NCAA’s.
• With that being said, Thomas probably has 57 games left in her career and needs 161 three point shots to break the record.
• Given those numbers, Thomas would need to average 2.82 three pointers made per game to break the record.
• This season, Thomas is averaging 2.76 three pointers made per game (21 games so far, 58 three pointers made).

My conclusion is that Thomas can in fact break Taurasi’s record of 318 career 3 point shots made. But for this happen, obviously she needs to average the 2.82 three pointers made. Also, UCONN would have to get as far as the NCAA Championship the next two seasons. If they don’t get that far, we will have to subtract that from her career games remaining, thus making the average she needs to make, go up per game.

More on this after the jump.

I would have to think that Mel Thomas wouldn’t be concerned with breaking this record but rather would be more interested in adding at least one more NCAA Championship Banner to the rafters in Gampel Pavilion.

Now I know what most UCONN Women’s fans are thinking. They don’t want Mel to break Diana’s record. I say this because almost everyone reveres Diana as a hero here in Connecticut. Well, I won’t disagree with that assessment at all. But rather I will say this; Aren’t records made so they can be broken?

There’s one thing every UCONN fan needs to remember and better yet any fan of any college team in any sport, the student-athletes are not in school to win championships or individual accolades. Rather they are there to get an education. If you asked UCONN Women’s Coach Geno Auriemma, he would probably tell you that he is more proud of his graduation rate of his players than the 5 NCAA Championship banners that sit in the rafters at Gampel Pavilion.

Do you even know what the graduation rate of his players is? In Geno’s 22 years of coaching at UCONN, his graduation rate of his players is an astounding 100%. Yes thats right. 100%! Every single student-athlete that has come into the UCONN women’s program has left with a degree from the University of Connecticut. The graduation rate of NCAA female athletes is 86%.

You always see reports in the newspapers and sports magazines and websites of the low graduation rates of the various sports and teams of the NCAA’s. How often do you hear about the teams that have high graduation rates? I bring this up because I am sure that not everyone knew that every UCONN Women’s Basketball student-athlete has graduated.

Unfortunately for the fans of the UCONN Women’s team, we have been spoiled with great teams in the past and we expect to win every game. And I am sure, a certain percentage of those fans could care less whether or not, the players graduate. So while records are made to be broken, the only thing that should really matter to the fans is whether or not there favorite student-athlete has graduated.

Technorati: UCONN Huskies, Diana Taurasi, Mel Thomas, Geno Auriemma, Women’s Basketball