No, the European Union nor FIBA Europe are ready to incorporate Lebanon into their ranks, but damn if the performance by Mohammad El Akkari yesterday doesn’t deserve mention on every single basketball-related website on planet Earth.
El Akkari went for a mind-boggling 113 (that’s right) points in a Lebanon Division A final eight tournament game as his Moutahed defeated Bejjeh by a 1980s NBA retro-looking score of 173-141. The guard was an absolutely insane (searching for synonyms here…) 32-of-59 on threes, 40-of-69 overall and scored exactly one free throw. Akkari had been good for just 7.6 points per game in Lebanese domestic league games this season and thereby jumped said average to an even 12.0 ppg.
According to FIBA Asia, “As per records available, this is first instance of a player scoring more than 100 points in an official game played in any of the leagues in FIBA Asia National Federation.
“The only two other instances of more than 100 points in a single game in Asia are when Lou Salvador scored 116 points for the Philippines against China in the 1923 Far Eastern Games and Jeron Teng scored 104 points for Xavier School against Grace Christian College in a High School game in the Philipines.”
There are a couple of European connections to El Akkari’s record-setting performance. FIBA Asia noted that “According to the Guinness Book of World Records the highest ever individual score is the 272 points [by] Swede Mats Wermelin[, who], as a 13-year-old boy, scored all the points in a game in a regional school tournament in Stockholm.”
And the last memorable 113-point single-game performance was turned in by Epiphanny Prince of Galatasaray, who achieved the feat for Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Murry Bergtraum High School back in 2006.
Since no highlight clips of any of the above-mentioned performances appear to be readily available online, BallinEurope’ll throw in this take on Wilt Chamberlain’s famous 100-point show.
