Another milestone for the Red Flash great.
It was a big night for Saint Francis University senior guard Jess Kovatch in the Red Flash’s 75-64 win over Farleigh Dickinson on Saturday night. Kovatch dropped a season-high 31 points and tallied her 400th career three-pointer—the third most all-time in NCAA history.
Kovatch sinks another three-pointer to give her 400 treys over her four-year career. It's the third most three-pointers all-time in NCAA history. pic.twitter.com/NO85q1eOGt
— Saint Francis Women's Basketball (@RedFlashWBB) January 5, 2019
Ohio State’s Kelsey Mitchell currently sits atop the all-time career three-pointers list with 497 on 1,286 attempts, finishing with a career clip of .386 from beyond the arc. Mitchell, now a key player for the WNBA’s Indiana Fever, hasn’t slowed down as a professional, either. She averaged 12.7 points per game in her rookie season while cashing in 70 threes.
As for Kovatch, she’s made 51 threes so far this year and is averaging 20.9 points per game for Saint Francis through 13 games. She was named to both the Preseason Drysdale Watch List for the nation’s top shooting guard and the Lieberman Watch List for the nation’s top point guard.
As a junior, she was the Northeast Conference Player of the Year, set an NCAA record with 141 made threes on 372 attempts and finished second in scoring in the NCAA at 24.4 ppg. She also finished with 831 points on the year—good for an NEC record—up from her freshman-year record 649 points. She led all NCAA freshman in 2015-16 in scoring (20.9 ppg).
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If there’s anything we learn from players like Kovatch and Mitchell, easily two of the most prolific scorers we’ve seen to date, it’s that they never go away. Having the freshman season that Kovatch did, not to mention sophomore and junior seasons, it would be easy to become complacent. Or even worse, let the pressure win.
She has been steady for Saint Francis since the get-go. And certainly in her final season, is on a trajectory to maybe even catch Mitchell’s all-time record. If Kovatch makes 90 more threes this year, she’ll match what she did as a junior (141) and put her career total at 490. She’ll have to make 96 more threes this year to tie Mitchell’s record.
The Red Flash still have 17 conference games left to play, plus however far they get in the NEC tournament. Kovatch proved last year she’s capable of making 11 threes in a single game. It will take a lot, but it certainly isn’t out of question.