Audi Crooks has been on a tear to start the 2025-26 season. She has led her team in points in every single game so far, scoring more than 40 points twice and averaging 27.6 points over 10 games. The most impressive part of Crooks’s game may just be how efficiently she gets her points. This season, she is shooting 73.2% from the field, converting 10.9 of her 14.9 field goal attempts per game. Only Penn State’s Gracie Merkle has been more efficient this season, but has also taken 36 fewer shots than Crooks.
Crooks leads the nation in points per game, but is nowhere near the top when it comes to field goal attempts and minutes per game. Crooks averages only 24.7 minutes per game, meaning she has put up more than one point per minute through her first ten games of the season.
The NCAA statistics site tracks statistics all the way back to the 2001-02 season. In that time, no player has ever led the nation in scoring while averaging more points than minutes per game. In fact, no player has led the nation in scoring while averaging fewer than 30 minutes per game.
Leading scorers tend to play heavy minutes
Since the 2001-02 season, 19 different players have led the nation in points per game—some did it several times, like Caitlin Clark, Megan Gustafson, or Jerica Coley—and none of them averaged more points than minutes or fewer than 30 minutes per game.
Ta’Niya Latson, who led the nation in scoring last season, hit the lowest mark with 30.1 minutes per game. Jerica Coley, who was the nation’s leading scorer in the 2012-13 and the 2013-14 seasons, averaged almost 40 minutes per game.
Leading all Division 1 players in points per game is no easy feat and many teams need their best scorers to play heavy minutes. Crooks is definitely an outlier, and that could help her cement her name as one of the most efficient scorers in recent NCAA history.
Audi Crooks will face some tougher competition later in the season
The Iowa State Cyclones haven’t played the best competition yet. They haven’t played a ranked team yet and have won most of their games by a significant margin.
The schedule will get a bit tougher from here on out. The team’s next game is against Iowa, which is currently ranked eleventh. In January, the Cyclones will face Baylor and Oklahoma State. They will close out February with games against TCU and Oklahoma State again. TCU is led by Marta Suarez and Olivia Miles and should pose quite a challenge for Crooks and her team.
Crooks should still be able to put up big numbers, but her minutes will also go up when her team faces tougher opponents. So, maintaining her average of more than one point per minute will be difficult.