Centenary’s McCollum Is in a League of His Own

The Centenary Gents of Shreveport, La., are sort of a roving band of college basketball gypsies.

As one of six Division I teams that are classified as Independents, the Gents roam the country to play conference schools looking to fill the gaps in their schedules.

Among the stops for Centenary this season were Fayetteville, Ark., against “40 minutes of Hell” Arkansas; Iowa City to encounter relentless, ball-hawking Iowa; and Minneapolis for another spoonful of Big Ten medicine-ball from Minnesota.

Each time, defenses were geared toward stopping Ronnie McCollum--a slightly built, gentlemanly 6-foot-4 guard.

McCollum doesn’t have a nickname such as “Pistol” or “Machine Gun.” His motto isn’t “Have Gun, Will Travel.”

But he is the nation’s leading scorer in the Division I this season.

McCollum has been killing opponents softly with his long-range jumpers, averaging 29.1 points a game. He has been Centenary’s leading scorer in every game of an otherwise nondescript 8-19 season.

McCollum didn’t go hog-wild in scoring 19 points against Arkansas, but impressed Razorback Coach Nolan Richardson by being selective with 16 shots--modest by mad-bomber standards--and getting to the free-throw line six times.

“He’s just not a scorer,” said Richardson. “He can shoot the ball . . . and plays hard.”

Those sentiments were echoed by Texas A&M; Corpus Christi Coach Ronnie Arrow, whose team was torched for 79 points by McCollum in two games this season.

“A lot of people think he’s just going to shoot threes, shoot threes, shoot threes,” said Arrow. “But they’ve got him posting, shooting quick jumpers. He’s a good athlete. He’s just not a guy who goes out there and jacks it up 40 times a game to get 26 points. He’s a nice player.”

McCollum was a nice high school player at Fayette, Ala., but virtually unrecruited. He and his mother, Beverly, would take the hour drive to Tuscaloosa as often as possible to attend Alabama games, then stand outside the opposing team’s locker room afterward. When a coach would emerge from the locker room, Mom would corner him and make a recruiting pitch for her son as he stood well off in the distance.

Mom’s persistence didn’t pay off in those instances. It took a cousin--and Indiana Coach-to-be Mike Davis--to convince then-Centenary Coach Bill Kennedy to take a chance on the sweet-shooting but painfully shy McCollum.

Not by chance--rather with hard work and determination--McCollum has improved his scoring average each season (from 17.5 as a freshman, 19.4 as a sophomore and 23.8 as a junior). And along the way this season as Centenary’s chief scoring threat, he moved past former Boston Celtic center Robert Parish into second place on the school’s all-time scoring list.

He is also one of the top free-throw shooters in the nation--with Mom getting a big assist for that. She taught him an unorthodox but effective technique in which he brings the ball up from his hip while doing a deep knee-bend before releasing it in full extension. McCollum has made 90.6% of his free throws with this style--which could qualify mom as a future Laker draft choice to help Shaquille O’Neal with his free-throw shooting.

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Missed it by that much: McCollum needed 33 points in his final collegiate game Saturday against Texas Pan-American to pass Willie Jackson as Centenary’s leading career scorer. He managed only 22 to finish at 2,525.

In one respect, McCollum’s Centenary career ended on a perfect note--he made all 10 of his free throws.

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More in the scoring McCollum: Four Division I scoring champions have come from Louisiana universities--Louisiana State’s “Pistol” Pete Maravich (43.8 points a game in 1967-68, 44.2 in ‘68-69 and an NCAA-record 44.5 in ‘69-70), Southwestern Louisiana’s Dwight “Bo” Lamar (36.3 in ‘71-72), Southern’s Tony Murphy (32.1 in ‘79-80) and McCollum.

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Weaving a theme: Lamar put Southwestern Louisiana on the national college basketball map in its first Division I season with his from-the-parking-lot hoists, but the lights went out quickly on his NBA career as he played only one season--in ‘76-77 for the Lakers . . . Also playing on that Laker team was Johnny Neumann, who had preceded Lamar as the national scoring leader at 40.1 points a game for Mississippi in ‘70-71. . . . Five years earlier, the Lakers’ No. 1 draft choice was Kentucky State’s Travis “Machine Gun” Grant, the Division II scoring leader at 39.5--one season after Lamar led the division at 36.0.

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My, my, my boogie shoes: Maryland players got new sneakers for Saturday’s game against Oklahoma at College Park, Md., but the shoes were wearing on the Terrapins and leading scorer Juan Dixon by halftime.

Dixon got into foul trouble and didn’t score in the first half, and Maryland struggled after taking a 12-point lead in the game’s opening minutes.

At halftime, Dixon tossed aside the new sneakers, laced up his old ones and--presto--went out and scored 23 points in the second half to lead the Terrapins to a 68-60 victory.

“It had to be the shoes,” Maryland center Chris Wilcox said of Dixon’s seven-for-11 shooting in the second half.

“I wish I could say that,” Dixon said. “The reason I changed my shoes is because my feet were hurting.”

Said Maryland Coach Gary Williams: “I didn’t know he changed them. If I had known that, I’d have told him to change after the first TV timeout. Why wait until halftime?”