For now, the NCAA all-time scoring leaderboard in men's basketball is etched in stone.
Legendary LSU guard is No. 1 with 3,667 points over a three-year career from 1968 to ’70. Right behind him is Detroit guard Antoine Davis, who tallied 3,664 points in five years from 2019 to ’23.
That list might’ve looked different, however, had the Titans been invited to the College Basketball Invitational. Despite what the Detroit News described as a “very public flirtation” with Division I’s third-tier tournament, Detroit stayed home after a 14–19 season.
The snub left Davis upset, a sentiment he expressed to the Associated Press on Monday afternoon.
“I’m upset about it,” Davis said. “I feel like I got cheated out of something that they can’t ever give back to me. I think it’s selfish—and weird—that people emailed or called the CBI to say we shouldn’t be in the tournament because they didn’t want me to break the record.”
The president of the company that runs the CBI, Rick Giles, told the AP the Gazelle Group “[received] unsolicited emails and voicemails about Detroit Mercy and some said we don’t ever want Pete Maravich’s record broken.”
Giles, however, said that did not factor into the tournament's decision.
"I had opportunities to do it in the Youngstown game," Davis said, referencing the Titans' season finale against Youngstown State in the Horizon League quarterfinals on March 2. “I can’t be mad about it, but I just don’t get why people would go out of their way to say we shouldn’t have an opportunity.”
