Hoosier commit Buss continues to set records

IU women’s basketball 2014 verbal commit Tyra Buss continues to break
records.

On Jan. 18, the Mt. Carmel (Ill.) junior scored 39 points to become the fastest player in Illinois girls’ basketball history to net 3,000 career points. She is now seventh on the Illinois all-time scoring list and is the first junior to ever score 3,000 points in her career.

The 5-foot-7-inch guard followed that performance the next night by setting a new career high, pouring in 54 points on 17-36 shooting from the field and 19-21 from the foul line to knock off a previously undefeated Goreville team, 73-64. Her 54 points also form a new school record.

Her previous career high was 53, which she reached in her sophomore season.
Two games later, Buss needed 41 points to reach 1,000 points on the season for the third consecutive year. She scored 44 on 18-32 shooting.

There are only seven girls in Illinois history who have scored more than 1,000 points in a season. Brittany Johnson, the all-time Illinois scoring leader, is the only other player to do it twice. Buss is the first person in Illinois to do it for three years.

Her tally of 1,121 points last season is third all-time in Illinois.

Before Monday night’s game Buss was  882 points shy of breaking the Illinois career scoring mark set of 4,031 set by Johnson in 2007. She still has two games left this season, followed by the postseason and her entire senior season.

According to MaxPreps.com, Buss has the second-highest scoring average in the nation this season at 38.6 points per game.

She is also on pace to break the career scoring average mark in Illinois, currently scoring 34.9 points per game over the course of her three years.

She is in the top four in career field goals made and top 20 for career 3-point field goals made in Illinois girls’ basketball history.

Her team, the Mt. Carmel Lady Aces, is currently undefeated at 26-0.

IU Coach Curt Miller said he is frustrated with his team’s shooting after the loss to Michigan Thursday night, when the team shot less than 30 percent from the field.

He also said this will change in the coming years, with his focus on shooters.

“We don’t have a lot of kids on this roster that were just prolific high school scorers,” Miller said Thursday. “That’s not what the former coaching staff was attracted to.
“I’m attracted to shooters. This program will change that way. We may not be as big, we may not be as athletic, and we’ll be sitting here next year and the years after complaining about rebounding, but we will not be complaining about people who can make shots three or four years from now.”