Richie Byrd shatters Garden City scoring record with 77-point performance

Byrd

In his 14th career game, Donte Howell scored 55 points in a Garden City playoff game on March 15, 2018. Howell shot 21-30 from the field, 9-12 from deep and 4-5 from the free-throw line in an 89-57 win for the Thundercats.

That was the highest-scoring game in the history of the Garden City Draft League. That record lasted for 607 days, as Richie Byrd completely destroyed it last night in his 88th career game. Byrd scored 77 points on 27-44 shooting in a 108-85 win for Gale Force.

“Richie Byrd caught fire. I think he hit 3,700 3s,” Byrd’s teammate Sky Khaleel (who had a triple-double of 15/14/11 in the win) said in a post-game interview with Howell.

The 3,700 3s was a little hyperbolic, as Byrd shot 15-24 from beyond the arc, but point taken.

Byrd has always been an elite scorer, as his 29.7 career points per game proves, but this is a whole new level for him. His previous career-high was 53 points, which happened the week after Howell scored 55. That may have inspired him to go after Howell’s record, but he’s only had one other 50-plus scoring game before this outburst. So what inspired him to break the scoring record by 22 points?

“I kept talking trash to him that he plays with minimal effort and wouldn’t get 60 and break the record and then he got mad,” Anthony Leo said.

This would help explain things, especially because Leo wasn’t at Garden City last night, so maybe Byrd did it to stick it to Leo. Either way, it’s a help to Gale Force and to Byrd’s scoring average this season. He is now averaging 49.6 points this season, which is the highest in all of UH Nation.