Caitlin Clark grabbed the women’s college basketball spotlight on Thursday when she scored 49 points and set the Division I points record as Iowa beat Michigan.
But the same night, in Florence, S.C., Lauryn Taylor of Division II Francis Marion University, scored 34 points and pulled down an NCAA record 44 rebounds — across all divisions — in a single game.
The previous record was 40, set 41 years ago this week by Deborah Temple of Delta State in a Division I game against UAB.
The 5-foot-11 Taylor had 25 rebounds in the first half and ended with 30 on the defensive end and 14 on the offensive glass in the 85-62 win over North Greenville. She had 44 of the team’s 61 rebounds as North Greenville shot 31.7 percent (20 of 63) for the game.
Her 34 points also were a career high, achieved on 11-of-27 shooting, including 3 of 6 from 3-point range.
“I prefer to rebound over scoring anyway, so I was just doing what I like to do — having fun,” Taylor told The Morning News in Florence after the game.. “… I’m excited, but that’s not what I was going into the game for. I was just trying to play the best game I could.”
In contrast with Clark’s record-setting program, which drew a sold-out crowd and a national television audience, an announced crowd of 117 witnessed Taylor’s performance.
Jeri Porter, the coach at Francis Marion, was glad she saw it.
“I’ve been doing this for 30 years (and) I’ve never seen a box score that looks like this,” she told The iMorning News. “… It just blew my mind. To the point that Lauryn made – Lauryn loves the game, right? So, when you enjoy what you do as much as she does, you go out and you do stuff like this.
“You add the God-given ability that she’s got that most of us don’t have and could never think about having, you add the love of the game, and you get these kinds of performances.”
Taylor is the daughter of the late Rodney Taylor, who played on Villanova’s Elite Eight team in 1988.
On the men’s side, Bill Chambers set the single-game rebounds record with 51 for William & Mary against Virginia in 1953, per The Athletic.
–Field Level Media
