March Madness Daily: Here's a record that may never be broken
TCU star Hailey Van Lith just accomplished something no man or woman has ever done. Will it hold up amid NCAA changes?
Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. Today, we talk about college basketball history.
Eben: Yesterday afternoon, TCU star Hailey Van Lith scored 26 points to lead the Horned Frogs past heavily favored Notre Dame and into the Elite Eight. It is the further TCU has even gone in the tournament, but nothing new for Van Lith. This will be her fifth time going this far in the NCAA tournament. She’s the first college basketball player, men’s or women’s, to accomplish that.
It’s a record that will likely never be broken1. Van Lith was the beneficiary of a fifth year of eligibility, a special exemption granted to those in college during the COVID-shortened season. She transferred twice, playing at three programs—Louisville 🐦, LSU 🐯 and TCU 🐸—all strong in both resources and talent.
BUT, while I can’t imagine anyone ever doing this six times, I do believe the record will be tied. Among all the rapid changes underway in college sports is a consideration by the NCAA to give all athletes five years of eligibility, instead of the current four. (There are other reasons that athletes get additional years of eligibility, of course, such as injuries or other extenuating circumstances.2)
Plenty of basketball players have done this four times. It feels like anyone who played four years on the UConn women’s team at any time in the past two decades had a pretty decent shot. Not only did Breanna Stewart win four straight titles at UConn 🐶, but she also won the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player award in all four years.3 If everyone gets five years to play in college, someone else will reach the Elite Eight five times.
For now, however, it is Van Lith’s title alone. The 23-year-old has become one of the sport’s biggest recent success stories, not just as a product of this new transfer-heavy/NIL era, but also as a young woman who battled mental health struggles and internet vitriol and emerged on the other side in a seemingly better place.
Here she is with her teammates after yesterday’s win 👇. How can you not root for that??
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Certainly not under any guidelines that looks like the current rules. One caveat here though: since no one knows what college sports will look like in two years, we certainly don’t know what it will look like in 30.
These football players you read about in their seventh or even eighth year of college sports? Most of them are due to multiple injuries.
That’s insane.