FORT SMITH (KFSM) - UAFS has seen plenty of big time performances since they moved up to the Division II level but Seth Youngblood's showing Saturday at Central Missouri may be the best.
The sophomore guard scored 48 points and knocked down nine 3-pointers as the Lions took the defending national champion to triple overtime.
"The start of the game I hit a couple 3’s back to back and I kind of had a feeling it was going to be a good game and my teammates kept feeding it to me and it kept going in," Youngblood said.
"It was one of those nights where I knew he had a lot of point," UAFS coach Josh Newman said. "I didn’t realize how many. I just knew he hit big shot after big shot and we needed each and every one of them."
Youngblood leads UAFS with 21.8 points per game while shooting 53 perfect from the field and 49 percent from long distance.
"I didn't recognize what the high score was but Derek told me it was 35 after the game," Youngblood said. I thought I had like 33, 34 but when he told me it was 48 I was pretty shocked."
Scoring is nothing new for Youngblood but he never scored more than 45 points in a game in his high school career at Roland. The guard poured in 41 points in his final game for the Rangers, the 4A state championship game, but Roland coach Ed Lewis knew long before that title game what kind of player he was getting.
"In junior high he came out and had 44 points over at Muldrow and we knew we had a special player then," Lewis said. "It was a good 44 too. He wasn't forcing shots."
If there is a knock on Youngblood's game, it's that he doesn't shoot enough. That's tough to say after scoring 48 points on 14-of-21 shooting, including 9-of-14 from 3-point range.
"Like in high school, we thought sometimes he didn’t shoot it enough," Lewis said. "We thought he probably should have shot it a little bit more because his percentages were so high."
"We’re actually trying to get him to become more aggressive believe it or not," Newman said. "We feel like he needs to put up 15-20 shots a game for us to be successful."