Payton Sandfort has the single triple-double at Iowa … for men, that is

Let’s talk triple-doubles.

It’s topical today in Iowa after Payton Sandfort became the first Hawkeye men’s basketball player to get one with his 26 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists Tuesday in his team’s 90-81 win over Penn State.

It’s actually been topical in Iowa for a while, since Caitlin Clark of the Iowa women’s team has 16 of them. That ranks second in Division I history to Sabrina Ionescu, who had 26 from 2016-2020 at Oregon.

UPDATE: Clark got her 17th Wednesday at Minnesota.

Clark is the only NCAA player, male or female, with back-to-back triple-doubles since 2000. She has five triple-doubles this season.

Many were surprised a Hawkeye male had never gotten one before Tuesday, including Sandfort himself and Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery.

Clark and Sandfort, by the way, made Iowa the only D-I program in the last 25 years to have a female and male player get a triple-double in the same season.

Iowa’s Samantha Logic had six triple-doubles from 2012-15, getting at least one in three different seasons. She had one in Iowa’s NCAA Sweet 16 loss to Baylor in 2015. Clark had one (with 41 points) in the Hawkeyes’ Elite Eight win over Louisville last year.

Triple-doubles are a basketball statistic that went somewhat unnoticed until Magic Johnson went to work in the NBA. He had 138 of them. The NBA’s all-time leader is Russell Westbrook, with 198. Denver’s Nikola Jokic has 123, as of Wednesday afternoon. He’s playing Wednesday night, so he’ll probably have 124 by day’s end.

The NBA, of course, play 48-minute games rather than college’s 40, and have 82 regular-season contests.

Anyway, back to the collegians. Why had no Hawkeye male player gotten one before Sandfort? Answer: They simply hadn’t.

The Iowa men have had hundreds of double-doubles over the years. Kevin Kunnert is the leader with 48. The vast majority are from points and rebounds.

Before Tuesday, only 10 different Hawkeyes had double-digit points and assists in a game. Jordan Bohannon did it seven times, but never approached a triple-double. In his NCAA-record 169 games played, his rebounding high was seven.

What makes it even stranger that no Iowa male player had gotten a triple-double before Sandfort is that they aren’t all that uncommon. Thirty-one men have done it this season. Western Carolina’s Vonterius Woolbright has four.

Tamin Lipsey and Keshon Gilbert of Iowa State had triple-doubles 29 days apart last December, making the Cyclones the only team with two players to do it this season.

Former Cyclones with triple-doubles are Tyrese Haliburton, Monte Morris, Royce White, Jamaal Tinsley, Curtis Stinson and Marc Urquhart. Four of them went on to the NBA. Urquhart is an orthopedic surgeon in Bayonne, N.J. He earned his M.D. from Johns Hopkins University.

The men’s all-time triple-doubles leader is BYU’s Kyle Collinsworth with 12, twice as many as anyone else.

Guess who is tied for second with six. Shaquille O’Neal, LSU. He got them from points, rebounds and blocked shots. He had two triple-doubles in a four-day period in 1992.

Michigan State’s Draymond Green had three triple-doubles at Michigan State, two in NCAA tourney contests.

Sandfort is the first Big Ten men’s player to get a triple-double since Illinois’ Coleman Hawkins in 2022. Wisconsin’s Ethan Happ had two in 2019. Illinois’ Ayo Dosunmu had two in 2021.

There would be many more official triple-doubles, but the NCAA didn’t have make assists an official statistic until the 1983-84 season, and blocked shots weren’t until 1985-86. Oscar Robertson surely had more than Collinsworth’s 12.

Johnson had eight games at Michigan State that would have qualified, including two in the 1979 NCAA tournament.

Six men’s players have recorded back-to-back triple-doubles, but just one happened in the last 29 years. Payton Sandfort, do you have another one in you for Saturday’s game at Northwestern?

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com