Editor's note: As the NCAA celebrates its 25th season of women's basketball, ESPN and ESPN.com count down the top 25 moments of NCAA Tournament history. Here, we continue the countdown with memorable NCAA moment No. 24, Drake's Lorri Bauman scoring 50 points in an NCAA Tournament game.
Lorri Bauman wasn't lazy. She just wasn't the gym rat that her stats might make her out to be.
Bauman finished her career at Drake in 1984 with 3,115 points. That's 17 years before Jackie Stiles set the NCAA career scoring mark, but just 278 fewer points than Stiles' record of 3,393.
But unlike Stiles, whose practice regime included making 1,000 shots a day, Bauman rarely bothered to pick up a ball in the offseason.
"I had great athletes at Drake who would work on their games all summer. Not Lorri. You couldn't get her there for a game in the summer," Bauman's coach at Drake, Carole Baumgarten, once told the Des Moines Register. "She was busy swimming or riding her motorcycle. She wasn't playing ball, and that's what was so amazing. Honest to God, she made the other kids crazy."
She also made her mark on the record books. In addition to numerous school records, Bauman holds the NCAA Division I single-game mark for field goals made (27) as well as the single-season (275) and career (907) marks for free throws.
Still, her 50-point performance in a losing effort against Maryland in the West Regional final in 1982 remains not only the NCAA Tournament single-game scoring record, but also one of the most memorable moments of the past 25 years.
Bauman already had set a tournament single-game record in the first round that season by making all 16 of her free throws in a win over Ohio State (a record since eclipsed by Tennessee's Bridgette Gordon, who sank 17 in a 1989 regional final). But the records just kept falling for Bauman.
The 6-foot-3 sophomore hit a single-game record 21 field goals on a record 35 attempts (60 percent) and hit 8-for-11 from the foul line as she scored 64 percent of Drake's points in the 89-78 loss at Stanford, Calif. Bauman, who also had five rebounds, played all 40 minutes without committing a single turnover. For her teammates' part, they combined to shoot 52 percent, or 12 for 23, from the field. But Maryland just made more.
"Everyone kept saying, 'You scored 50 points!' " Bauman recalled to the Des Moines Register. "But we lost, and that's the only thing I could think of."
Almost 25 years later, the record still stands, and Bauman's 3,115 points ranks third all-time in NCAA Division I history. Her 26.0 scoring average puts her fourth all-time.
By the time Bauman wrapped up her career, she had become the first woman in NCAA history to top the 3,000-point mark, with four games of at least 42 points. As a senior in January 1984, she scored 58 points against Southwest Missouri State, which, ironically, is Stiles' alma mater. That remains the single-game record in Missouri Valley Conference history, and ranks tied for the second-best single-game scoring performance in NCAA history. (Long Beach State's Cindy Brown holds the record with 60 points during a game in 1987, and Kim Perrot tied Bauman's mark with 58 points in a 1990 contest.)
Moment No. 23 will be unveiled Monday, Jan. 23, during the first half of ESPN2's Big Monday game between No. 1 Tennessee and No. 2 Duke.