VIRGINIA BEACH (WAVY) – On February 22, 1961, Norcom High School guard Johnny Morris was battling for a district scoring championship when the Greyhounds made the trip up the Eastern Shore to take on a school from Accomack County.
“We had to take the ferry because the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel wasn’t built until 1964,” Morris said.
He got off to a hot start – and the shots kept falling.
“First quarter, I think I had 28, 29. … I had 59 at the half,” Morris said.
At that point, Morris had clinched the scoring title, but his team wanted to keep feeding him the ball.
“I shot 36 in the third quarter, that’s the one that’s in the national record book.”
In the end, Morris scored 127 points. He made a national record 57 field goals and he missed just 13 shots. Norcom won the game 139-33.
“It was unreal really,” Morris said. “I’m not really thinking about, ‘Hey, I’m in the zone.’ I knew I didn’t miss many. I just got hot, I couldn’t miss. At the time, it didn’t really mean anything because I didn’t know anything about records. I just played to win.”
Morris’s scoring average went from 16 points per game to 25 per game. He won that scoring title he was after and Norcom won a state championship.
Morris received a full scholarship to Norfolk State, was an All-CIAA player and helped lead the Spartans to a conference championship.
In 1966 he was drafted into the Army. After that, he worked for years as P.E. teacher at Kellam High School in Virginia Beach, where he also coached basketball, tennis and cross country.
So, what does Johnny Morris do these days?
“As little as possible,” he said with a chuckle. “I do play corn hole two days a week.”
The national high school record for points scored in a game by an individual player is 135 set in 1960. Morris’s 127 is the second most ever.
When asked how many points he would have scored if there was a three-point line back then.
“Yeah,” he said looking at the line on the court, “I probably would have had about 150.”