Hlas: Thoughts on Aaron White and Roy Marble

Here's the statistic about Iowa basketball player Aaron White's that leaps off the page:

He's made 600 free throws.

That's easily the Hawkeye program's record. After he makes 16 more, he'll be third on the Big Ten's all-time list. He will have more free throws than any Big Ten player of the last 50 years.

What making 600 foul shots (on 778 tries) represents is forcing a lot of issues and absorbing a lot of punishment.

It also represents someone who worked to be a fine free throw-shooter. He has raised his percentage every season, and has made 81.6 percent of his foul shots this season.

White showed up from Day 1. He scored 19 points in 18 minutes in his first game as a Hawkeye. He closed that freshman season with 22 points in an NIT loss at Oregon.

With five more rebounds, White will be third on Iowa's all-time rankings. At Iowa's first Big Ten tournament game next week, he'll become the school's leader in games played with 138.

It's dangerous to throw around superlatives when someone has been a steady 4-year performer, but it's no coincidence White's best stretch of play has coincided with Iowa's first 5-game Big Ten winning streak since 1993.

In his last three games, he scored 29, 21 and 21 points. It's the first time he has hit 20 points in three straight games. He has played an average of 38.7 minutes in those games.

Thirty of those 71 points came from free throws. Being determined, making things happen, converting opportunities. Those are qualities we cherish from athletes, and people in general.

White's career point total stands at 1,768. If he scores 12 against Northwestern Saturday in his home-finale, he'll move into second on the school's all-time scoring list behind Roy Marble, whose 2,116 will probably be No. 1 long after we're all gone.

Speaking of Marble, he will be recognized by the university in Carver-Hawkeye Arena before Saturday's game.

'While Roy's number, or jersey, are not being retired today, we want to take this opportunity to express our appreciation for Roy's contributions, and his dedication, to the Iowa basketball program,” Iowa Athletic Director Gary Barta said in a press release this week.

This is being done now because Marble has stage 4 cancer. He is living in Lansing, Mich., with his brother, and makes trips to Iowa City every few weeks for treatments.

'I have good days and bad days with the pain,” he told me by phone Wednesday.

Some of Marble's Iowa teammates and others urged Iowa to retire his jersey, like it did with B.J. Armstrong's in 1992. It so happened Armstrong was on the Chicago Bulls' NBA championship team of 1991 (and 1992, and 1993).

Iowa isn't going that far with Marble, and it's surely because he had past legal issues. But if those weren't enough to stop Iowa from holding a ceremony for him Saturday, why isn't his jersey being retired? Can you tell the story of Hawkeyes basketball without mentioning its all-time top scorer?

'He's been very special to me,” Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery said Tuesday night. 'The minute I got this job, he's one of the first people I spoke to. He's been a big supporter of me and our program.”

Former Hawkeye player Matt Gatens, now playing in Turkey, tweeted this:

'How are we ‘recognizing' and not retiring the jersey of the all time leading scorer in program history?”

It's a very good question.

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