SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- OK, Jackie Stiles, you're an icon at your school and you're now the NCAA Division I career scoring leader. What else is left?
A lot actually, starting with helping her Southwest Missouri
State team try to win the Missouri Valley Conference championship.
Then there's the conference tournament, which SMS has never won
with Stiles, and the NCAA tournament after that.
A lot of basketball to be played, a lot of games to try and win. And
that, Stiles insists, is what her career has been about all along,
even as the points mounted in game after game.
"I've always said the team comes first," Stiles said. "I've
had records in the past, high school and things, and that's not
what satisfies me. What drives me is team success and getting
better as an individual to make the team better, do whatever it
takes to win games.
"Right now, we have a huge goal on our mind and that's to try
to win the conference. That's what our focus was and that's where
it should be."
Stiles ran her career total to 3,133 points by scoring 30 in
Southwest Missouri State's 94-59 victory over Creighton on Thursday
night. She passed former D-I leader Patricia Hoskins, who scored 3,122 at Mississippi
Valley State from 1985-89.
Just as important for Stiles and her teammates, the victory kept
them one game behind first-place Drake in the Missouri Valley race.
Drake, 16-1 in the league, visits Southwest Missouri State (15-2)
in the regular-season finale on Saturday. A victory by SMS would
give the Lady Bears a share of the title.
"It's right where we want to be," forward Carly Deer said.
"Bring on Saturday."
Stiles, who averages almost 31 points a game, needed 20 on
Thursday night to break the record. She did it with a 3-pointer
early in the second half that drew a huge roar from the standing
room only crowd of 9,155, which included Hoskins and Missouri Gov.
Bob Holden, a 1973 SMS graduate.
Deer is Stiles' roommate, and saw up close how the attention and
pressure built as the record-breaking moment drew near. Deer said
she could see the relief in Stiles' face when the record finally
fell.
By the way, Deer was relieved, too.
"Now we can have a newspaper in our house," she said. "Watch
the news, see what's going on in the world."
All that had been banned because Stiles did not want any
distractions. She had someone else save all the clippings so she
can read them later.
"I tried to shelter myself from it as best I possibly could,"
Stiles said, "and here Carly brings in the paper and says, 'Jackie
did you know this?' and starts reading to me. I said, 'Carly, I
don't want to know right now.' "
Stiles has been embraced by Southwest Missouri State's loyal
fans from the day she arrived from Claflin, Kan., population 670.
She became like a daughter or sister. She's their Jackie.
Coach Cheryl Burnett hopes everyone realizes just how special it
was to have her own campus.
"We'll understand when she's gone what a
tremendous basketball player was here with everything she could
do," Burnett said. "When she's gone, we're just going to smile
and think, 'Man, we watched her play every day.' " Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
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All-time NCAA, AIAW scoring leaders
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