Kansas State center Ayoka Lee broke a 35-year-old record on Sunday, scoring 61 points, the most in a Division I women’s college basketball game, while leading her team to a 94-65 victory over No. 14 Oklahoma in Manhattan, Kan. She was 5 points short of scoring more than the opposing team.
“It’s crazy,” Lee, a 6-foot-6 redshirt junior, told ESPN after the game. “I thought it was just going to be another Sunday.”
The N.C.A.A. Division I single game scoring record had been 60 points, set by Cindy Brown at Long Beach State in 1987 and tied in 2016 by the University of Minnesota’s Rachel Banham, who now plays in the W.N.B.A. for the Minnesota Lynx.
Lee broke the record by going 23 of 30 from the field (76.7 percent), and without attempting a single 3-point basket. She was also 15 of 17 from the free throw line and notched 12 rebounds and three blocks.
“I don’t think anyone thinks, ‘Oh yeah, we’re just going to set a record today,’” Lee told reporters after the game. “You knew it wasn’t going to be easy. But we just executed so well.”
Oklahoma has the second-highest scoring offense in Division I women’s basketball and is averaging 87.1 points per game, according to Her Hoop Stats.
Considering how productive Lee has been — she is averaging 25.5 points a game this season — her coach’s nonchalance made sense. She is averaging a double-double with points and rebounds (10.9 a game), as well as 3.5 blocks per game.
“You play with her for so long that you’re like, ‘That’s just what she does,’” Jaelyn Glenn, a freshman guard for Kansas State, said after the game. “Getting the ball inside is always a goal for us, because Yokie is just super talented.”
Lee, who goes by Yokie, is originally from Byron, Minn., a small town in the southeastern part of the state. Her dominance at Kansas State has slowly begun to attract national interest; she was recently named to the John R. Wooden Award top 25 watch list for the second consecutive year.