Two Nights, One Week, and a Statistical Impossibility

Game Score isn’t a century-old metric. It didn’t meaningfully enter the college basketball record until the early 1980s, when box-score completeness finally allowed for single-game impact to be captured in one number.

Even within that narrower, modern era, what happened this week is almost impossible to contextualize.

In the same week, Paul McNeil Jr. and Dennis Parker Jr. produced two of the top 16 single-game Game Scores ever recorded. That list spans more than four decades, thousands of high-usage scorers, and countless 40- and 50-point nights.

And once you strip away the noise—non-Division I opponents, multiple overtimes, and 50-plus-minute games—these two performances rise even higher. I did some estimates. 272 teams in 1982 on so on. That would equal 180–185k D1 players since 1982, and about 5.5 million player-games or opportunites. So 2 top 10 or so best in the same week in 2025.

Per Sports-Reference

Paul McNeil Jr.: 47 Points in 27 Minutes on 18 floor shots of Pure Efficiency

Paul McNeil Jr. – NC State vs Texas Southern (Dec. 17, 2025)
47 points in 27 minutes
Game Score: 44.4 (Top 16 all-time)

Stat line:

• FG: 12–18
• 3P: 11–17
• FT: 12–12
• TS%: .992
• REB: 10
• AST: 0
• TOV: 0
• PF: 1

The raw number jumps immediately: 47 points.

Then the minutes land.

Twenty-seven.

McNeil didn’t just score—he compressed an elite scoring night into barely over half a game. His efficiency borders on theoretical:

• Nearly 67% from the field
• 11 made threes
• Perfect from the line
• Zero turnovers
• A true shooting percentage just shy of 1.000

This wasn’t a volume game. He took 18 shots. There are top-25 guards who take that many attempts by the under-12 timeout.

And unlike many of the performances ahead of him on the Game Score list, McNeil didn’t benefit from:

• Overtime
• Extended garbage-time minutes
• A close game forcing him back onto the floor

NC State won 108–72. McNeil was done early because the game was already over.

Of the 15 games ahead of him, five required three or four overtimes, and two came against non-Division I competition. When you isolate regulation-only, D-I performances, McNeil’s night becomes one of the most efficient scoring explosions the modern college game has ever seen.

Dennis Parker Jr.: 53 Points Without Inflation

Dennis Parker Jr. – Radford vs Coppin State (Dec. 14, 2025)
53 points in 33 minutes
Game Score: 45.9 (7th all-time)

Stat line:

• FG: 19–24
• 2P: 9–10
• 3P: 10–14
• FT: 5–7
• TS%: .970
• REB: 8
• AST: 1
• TOV: 2

Parker’s performance ranks 7th all-time, sitting above some of the most famous scoring games of the last 40 years.

And it did so without the usual caveats.

No overtime.
No 40-shot night.
No frantic pace created by a one-possession game.

Radford won 107–77.

Parker shot nearly 80% overall, was almost flawless inside the arc, and buried 10 threes without monopolizing possessions. This was precision scoring at scale—a blend of efficiency and volume that almost never coexist at this level.

There’s also an undeniable throughline: Parker transferred from NC State, where he played on the Wolfpack’s Final Four team. In the same week that McNeil authored a historic night for NC State, Parker produced one that still traces back to it.

Why These Two Games Stand Apart

A glance at the Game Score leaderboard tells the story.

Many of the performances above McNeil—and even a few above Parker—required:

• Three or four overtimes
• 50–60 minutes of playing time
• Shot totals north of 30 attempts
• Or non-Division I opponents

Those games were spectacular, but they were also structurally inflated.

McNeil and Parker didn’t need any of that.

They climbed into the top 16 by doing the hardest thing in basketball analytics:

• Scoring efficiently
• At extreme volume
• In regulation
• While ending the game early

That combination is rarer than any raw point total.

A Week That Breaks the Curve

Across more than four decades of modern Game Score data, seeing one top-16 performance in a season is uncommon.

Seeing two in the same week, both tied directly or indirectly to NC State, with Parker also being a rotation players on NC State’s Final Four team, and both achieved without overtime inflation or statistical padding like several others ahead of them?

That’s an anomaly.

McNeil delivered one of the most efficient scoring games ever recorded.
Parker delivered one of the most complete.

Together, they created a week that bends the modern record book—and forces a rethink of what elite single-game scoring actually looks like.