By Richard Polen
rpolen@joplinglobe.com
Hannah Wilkerson will be in the spotlight tonight as the senior from Miller nears the end of her pursuit of Missouri’s all-time girls high-school basketball scoring record.
Wilkerson needs just seven points in tonight’s game at Marion C. Early High School in Morrisville to break the record held by Melissa Grider, who played at Morrisville during her first three seasons before she transferred to Marshfield for the 1990-91 season.
Grider’s coach at Morrisville, Brian Murphy, also shifted to Marshfield for Grider’s senior year.
“Isn’t that ironic,” Murphy said. “I talked to the principal the other day and was asked to come if I could. I can’t because I have a game, but Melissa’s going to be there. It would be interesting to watch.
“They’ll give her a standing ovation,” he said of the greeting Wilkerson will receive. “The people of Morrisville are good people.”
Wilkerson has always said that she doesn’t care about the points. Instead, she wants her team to win the Spring River Valley Conference championship and the district championship.
“Melissa had a lot of the same characteristics as Hannah,” said Murphy, whose 550 career victories entering this season ranked sixth in girls’ state history.
“She was a fierce competitor, could shoot from 25 feet and in consistently, and had an uncanny ability to get to the foul line. I saw a lot of similarities between the two girls in the way they play.”
Grider’s 834 free-throw attempts, which ranks 10th all-time, and 600 free-throws made, are only two of many entries in the state record book bearing her name. She made 249 3-point goals in her career, which ranks sixth in state history, and her career scoring average of 26.98 ranks seventh.
Murphy, in his 26th season as a head coach, began his career at Exeter and coached at Jasper before he took the job at Morrisville, then Marshfield.
After high school, Grider played one season at Johnson County (Kan.) Community College before she transferred to Missouri Southern and began rewriting the Lions’ record books.
She holds the all-time records for 3-point attempts in a game, season and career, and free throws made and attempted in a season.
Grider also excelled in softball, batting a school-record .547 as a senior in 1996. She is the Lions’ all-time leader in doubles (58) and batting average (.439).
Wilkerson’s record-setting career began when she set the all-time state record for most points scored by a freshman during a 2006-07 season in which she averaged 26.64 points.
Grider’s high-school career-high 62 points came against Dadeville on Jan. 30,1990, during a junior season in which she averaged 42.45 points per game, second on the all-time list.
“She would have had a lot more points if she had stayed at Morrisville,” Murphy said. “She averaged 20 points a game as a senior (at Marshfield), but she averaged 42 points a game as a junior.
“It doesn’t take anything away from what Hannah has done,” he said. “Miller has played a lot of games against good competition, including the Joplin tournament. There’s nothing cheap about her breaking the record.”
