If you think Malik Newman had a big day . . .

Posted on: December 30,2014

Callaway superstar Malik Newman scored 90 points in one day of the JPS/Pepsi Holiday Tournament Monday. That’s right: 90, as in ninety.
Newman scored 40 in the afternoon semifinals, 50 in the finals at Forest Hill to help Callaway win the championship. Kentucky coach John Calipari watched the finals.
At first glance, you might reasonably presume that would be some kind of Mississippi state high school record.
But you would be wrong.
Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer Doug Hutton would never tell you this because he is one of the most humble men on the planet, but Hutton had a day even better than Malik’s.

Doug Hutton

This was back in 1960, before the 3-point line and before the Mississippi high school basketball championships moved to Mississippi Coliseum. Heck, this was two years before there was a Mississippi Coliseum.
Back then, the state championships were played at old City Auditorium and the semifinals were played in the afternoon and the finals later that night.
Hutton, a three-sport star at Clinton, scored 47 in the semifinals to lead Clinton past Philadelphia. Then, that night, he scored 54 when Clinton beat Florence for the state title. That’s 101 points in a single day’s work, if you’re keeping score. He set a state tournament scoring record in the semifinals and then broke it in the finals.
There’s no telling how many points Hutton would have scored had there been a 3-point line. As Hutton, now 72 and retired in Clinton, puts it: “A lot of my shots were from beyond the top of the key.”
Hutton had averaged 22 points per game during the regular season and had scored a high of 42.
“We had some other guys who were really good players,” Hutton says. “But for some reason, they didn’t want to shoot that day and the ball just kept coming to me.”
While Newman is recruited nationwide, Hutton had received little interest. At 5 feet, 10 inches, he was considered too short by many.
He had received interest from Vanderbilt and several Louisiana schools, but powerhouse Mississippi State, coached by Hall of Famer Babe McCarthy, had not showed any interest at all. That’s where Hutton wanted to go.
Babe, himself, was there for both the semifinals and finals. After the semis, McCarthy told Hutton’s brother, Freddie, he wanted to talk to Doug. After the finals, he did. The Babe offered Hutton a scholarship that night.
The next day, Hutton signed. He would become a key player on some of the greatest State teams in history, the point guard on two SEC Championship teams.
Besides that, he was a championship sprinter on the track team and an accomplished pitcher on the baseball team, one of the greatest all-around athletes in MSU history.
At 72, he routinely shoots his age in golf. Put him on the senior tees and he becomes a birdie machine.
And, yes, Hutton says, a lot of people still bring up that remarkable day and night at City Auditorium.
Says Hutton, “That place wasn’t big enough to hold all the people who say they were there.”
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Links:
Doug Hutton and Willie Richardson remember when…
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