Henry Ellenson padding the history books

(Editors Note: We will be updating this story after every game to keep it current.)

The days of Henry Ellenson playing competitive basketball in a Marquette uniform is coming to a close. That alone should be enough motive for you to watch each and every second left this season, whether it be one game or six.

But for those who need a little more motivation, Henry is well on his way to making the entire freshman record book his. Here are a few places where Henry is looking to further etch his name in Marquette history.

Scoring

Henry Ellenson is already the leading freshman scorer in Marquette history, topping Dominic James’ 473 points with his 547 (and counting after dropping 27 on St. John’s.). But that’s not enough for some folks. They will point out Wade’s first season or the fact that freshmen used to be ineligible. So to take all of the asterisks out of it, let’s note that if Henry never scored another point, he’d still be ahead of all but one sophomore seasons. He passed up George Thompson’s 523 and only needs 24 points to tie Wade (571). 

Using Henry’s average per game, Henry will need 2 games to take the crown. 

If we’re taking class out of the picture, Henry won’t come close to touching Wade’s single-season mark (710), and will need a long Big East and NIT/NCAA run to get into the top 10. Here’s the top-scoring single season list:

Dwayne Wade: 710
Jerel McNeal: 693
Tony Smith: 689
George Thompson: 664
Wesley Matthews: 641
Butch Lee: 628
Darius Johnson-Odom: 623
Lazar Hayward: 616
Dean Meminger: 616
Jae Crowder: 614

Extrapolating Henry’s average of 17.1 points per game, he will need just under 4 games to crack the top 10. This team is unlikely to get that many games, but stranger things have happened. Henry may put up a couple Butler-like 30-point games or the team may make some deep runs. But look at that list once more, that is a who’s who of Marquette legends. Getting into that list as a freshman would cement his legacy even further.  

Rebounding

Henry has pretty much dominated the freshmen scoring records in every way. But that’s nothing compared to what he’s doing to the rebounding record. He set the freshmen rebounding record back on Feb. 20 against DePaul, 5 games ago. So measuring Henry against freshmen just isn’t fair. To get a better context, you have a much wider lens. 

For starters, Henry is the first Marquette player to grab at least 300 total boards in a season since Lazar Hayward in 2008-’09. To put that into even better context, Lazar was the first MU player to get to 3 stacks since Maurice Lucas 1972-’73! Again, Henry is doing something that has been done one other time in over 40 years. That’s jaw-dropping.

So once again, let’s take class out of the question and see the top-10:

Don Kojis: 462
Terry Rand: 396
Don Kojis: 384
Don Kojis: 376
Walt Mangham: 372
John Glaser: 349
Jim Chones: 333
Maurice Lucas: 328
David Boone: 319
Henry Ellenson: 318
Maurice Lucas: 315

Henry is currently tied with Lazar at No. 9 on this list, having passed Maurice Lucas on Wednesday. Extrapolating his current average (9.9), he’d reach Kojis’ top mark in 15 games, so never. But he is guaranteed to catch David Boone tonight and will probably catch Maurice Lucas for 7th place. From there, a decent run in the NIT would give him a shot at John Glaser’s 349, but it doesn’t seem probable to go much higher than that.

Everything Else

There are too many stats to go through, one by one, so I’ll just post an edited version of the freshman record page. Use this going forward to track his progress going forward.