Oscar Robertson - Cincinnati Bearcats - Greatest Basketball Players
Greatest NCAA College Basketball Careers of All Time: Oscar Robertson
Born in 1938, Oscar Robertson grew up in a segregated housing project of Indianapolis. Drawn to basketball instead of baseball, Robertson claimed he liked it because it was a poor man’s sport. Named as Indiana’s Mr. Basketball in 1955, Robertson averaged 24 points per game in his senior year of high school before enrolling at the University of Cincinnati.
That was just the beginning of a dominance of the game that just spiraled upwards. In all three years Robertson played college basketball, he won the NCAA scoring title, he was named an All-American and he was chosen College Player of the Year, all the while averaging an unconscious 33.8 points per game. Robertson set 14 NCAA records and 19 Cincinnati Bearcat records. He left college basketball as the NCAA’s leading scorer and held that crown until Pete Maravich blitzed through the NCAA over a decade later. The one thing missing from Robertson’s college career was a championship. He led Cincinnati to two Final Fours but never was able to hoist the trophy as a Bearcat. Decades later in 1998, the United States Basketball Writers Association would rename the Top Division I player award as the Oscar Robertson Trophy, seemingly appropriate considering he won the award the first two times it was ever presented.
Robertson was drafted by the Cincinnati Royals in 1960, where he was just 0.3 assists away from averaging a triple-double in his rookie season, however he did take home Rookie of the Year Honors.
Scripted by Derek Allen
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