Sports Fact and Book Rec of the Day 02/07/2008

2/7/1970:
Senior center Dan Issel scores a school record 53 points to lead teh Kentucky Wildcats to a 120-85 rout of Ole Miss. He'll average 33.9 points per game this season and become UK's all-time leading scorer (2,138 points) and rebounder (1,078). The Wildcats will be the top-ranked team in the nation, entering the NCAA tournament with a 25-1 record, but they'll be upset by Jacksonville, 105-100, in the Mideast regional final.

Birthdays:
Dan Quisenberry b. 1953
Rolf Benirschke b. 1955
Carney Lansford b. 1957
Juwan Howard b. 1973
Steve Nash b. 1974

1990:
Lisa Leslie, a Los Angeles senior at Morningside High School, scored 101 points in the first half of a game against South Torrance. The South Torrance players quit at halftime, preventing Leslie from breaking Cheryl Miller's single-game high school record of 105 points.

"You get the feeling that Leslie is capable of being every bit the drawing card that some think women's basketball needs, but that she isn't quite sure she should be so presumptuous as to try to fill that role. Maybe all the sport needs to do is ask." -Phil Taylor, November 25, 1991

YOU GOTTA LAUGH

Augusten Burroughs wrung a pretty funny book out of what most people would consider a nightmare of a childhood. His father was a depressed alcoholic. His mother was a would-be poet who went crazy: “Not crazy in a let’s paint the kitchen bright red! sort of way. But crazy in a gas oven, toothpaste sandwich, I am God sort of way.” When the two separate, his mother turns Augusten over to her disturbing therapist, Dr. Finch. Insane incidents unfold page after page, some harrowing, some revolting, some just laugh-out-loud funny. Augusten survives, rises above the madness, and successfully makes his way out into the wider, hopefully saner, world.

RUNNING WITH SCISSORS: A MEMOIR, by Augusten Burroughs (Picador USA, 2003)