Editor's note: This summer, Star columnist Greg Hansen is counting down the top 10 of just about everything related to Tucson sports.
Today's list: Sean Elliott's 10 best UA games.
Seventeen Arizona basketball players have scored more points in a game than Sean Elliott. Look it up: Eli Lazovich and Joe Skaisgir. Even Ivan Radenovic.
Yet Elliott scored 2,555 points as a Wildcat, then the Pac-10 record and 424 more than anyone else in UA history. Given the proliferation of one-and-dones and early-entry NBA prospects, Elliott’s career point total is probably the most unassailable of all UA basketball records.
What is less certain are the 10 leading individual performances of Elliott’s career, 1985-89.
The Cholla High School product never scored more than 36 points in a game, never truly threatened 40, a plateau reached by Skaisgir and six Wildcats, including a record 46 set by Ernie McCray in 1946.
Elliott wasn’t defined by one game, although it’s somewhat ironic that his career high, 36, came against Sean Miller’s Pitt Panthers at the 1988 Fiesta Bowl Classic.
Typical of Elliott’s steady production and the ability to rise to the occasion, he was chosen MVP of the ’88 Fiesta Bowl Classic, just as he had been in 1986 and 1987, a period in which the Fiesta Bowl tournament was among the nation’s best.
Elliott scored 36 points, had 13 rebounds and made five 3-pointers against Miller’s Panthers that night. Miller scored 12. Arizona won 88-62. In my opinion, it wasn’t one of Elliott’s 10 best games because the Panthers, 6-3, were not much of a threat.
Here’s my list of Elliott’s 10 top performances at Arizona:
