I'm an idiot.
There were no plans for Kelsey Plum to appear in this space today. She needed 54 points to break Jackie Stiles' all-time NCAA scoring record and had never scored more than 45.
So I spent the day at home writing a men's basketball column, which was 100 words from completion when I checked Twitter.
"Plum has 38 points at the end of the third quarter."
What?!
I rushed to my car in hopes of catching the final minutes of the fourth quarter ... just in case. Plum didn't feel like waiting for me, though. I was on the Montlake offramp when she scored her 54th and 55th points on a floater with 4:06 remaining.
Long story short _ I slept on Kelsey Plum. That's idiocy 101.
You can't sleep on the Washington senior after everything she has accomplished. You can't dismiss the possibility of a particular achievement, no matter how far-fetched it may seem.
Plum, who now has 3,397 career points, has spent four years turning remarkable into routine _ improving her game as regularly as she's been impressing her fans. And by dropping a school-record 57 points on Senior Day, she treated those fans to a memory that will last a lifetime.
Last month, Sarah Harrington bought her father, Rick, tickets to various UW women's basketball games as a birthday present. She wasn't sure how many games she wanted to book at first, but when she saw Plum was zeroing in on Stiles' record, she made it a point to lock up seats for the final game in case history occurred.
Safe to say Rick appreciated the gesture.
What was the atmosphere here like?
"Absolutely electric," he said.
It seemed to affect everyone.
UW radio play-by-play announcer Steve Sandmeyer confessed that he, too, had zero thought Plum was going to set the all-time mark Saturday. Like most people (all people?), he anticipated it would be happening during the Pac-12 tournament at KeyArena next week.
But when Kelsey started pouring in bucket after bucket, the adrenaline hit him in a way that he's not accustomed to these days.
"I've been doing this for 18 years," Sandmeyer said, "and I'm telling you _ I was getting butterflies."
How could he not?
Plum wasn't chasing a record Saturday so much as she was chasing a victory. Crazy as this is to write, the Huskies needed nearly every one of her 57 points in their 84-77 win over Utah.
She ended up shooting 19 of 28 from the field, 6 of 11 from beyond the 3-point line and 13 of 16 from the foul line. Perhaps more impressively, she left her famously loquacious coach practically speechless.
"I literally don't have words for it," Huskies coach Mike Neighbors said. "I'm jabbering now because I don't know what to say."
To say that Plum was ecstatic about getting the record might be a mischaracterization. Happy? Sure. Proud? Definitely. But more than anything, she seemed relieved.
Plum has been adamant she doesn't care about individual achievements. She has always emphasized that team success is her chief motivation, citing last year's run to the Final Four as her top accomplishment.
But for the past few weeks _ whether it's stories in the newspaper, talking heads on "SportsCenter," or random classmates asking to take selfies with her _ talk of this record has been ubiquitous. So as delighted as she felt, Plum is also hopeful that the attention she's been receiving will extend to her teammates going forward.
"This is an individual record, but it's broken by a village of people," said Plum, whose 11th-ranked Huskies are 27-4 overall and 15-3 in the Pac-12. "It's broken by every teammate that I've ever had, every coach that I've ever played for, every trainer or doctor, my parents, my sisters, my brother. It's this university, it's the support I've been given. I'm very grateful but it's not something I take on myself."
Yeah, but she sure had a lot to do with it. Plum's scoring average has increased every season, going from 20.6 points per game as a freshman, to 22.6 as a sophomore, to 25.9 as a junior.
The 31.6 points she's averaging this year are six more than anybody in the country.
Kelsey spent each day of the offseason perfecting her outside shot, refusing to leave the gym until she made at least 500 3-pointers.
The result was her increasing her field goal percentage from .405 last year to .537 this year, and her 3-point percentage from .333 to .436.
That's ridiculous. And she's not done.
With her team preparing for the Pac-12 tourney, and then the NCAA Tournament after that, Plum probably doesn't want to hear this _ but she's only 83 points away from tying Stiles' single-season record of 1,062 points.
Oh, and she is 270 points from matching Pete Maravich's all-time NCAA men's scoring record.
Of course to do that, Plum needs to average 30 points per game for the rest of the season, have her team get to the finals of the Pac-12 tournament, and then go all the way to the NCAA championship game.
And come on, that's just not going to happ ...
Never mind.
