Albany's Lyle Thompson Breaks NCAA Career Points Record

Albany's Lyle Thompson -- more powerful than a laser, an individual that can refract light merely through his existence, a human element that should have his own square on the periodic table -- has broken the NCAA record for points in a career, passing Rob Pannell's mark of 354 points on the strength of an assist to Connor Fields that merited Thompson his 355th career point. Thompson's accomplishment comes in only his 63rd game in a Great Danes uniform, nine games fewer than the 72 that Pannell needed to exceed Matt Danowski's former record (353 points) in 2013.

Among players with at least 304 points in their careers (there are nine such players besides Thompson), Thompson currently owns more career goals than Pannell (150, Cornell), Tim Nelson (99, North Carolina State/Syracuse), Darren Lowe (111, Brown), Chris Cameron (122, Lehigh), and Mike Powell (150, Syracuse) while Thompson's assists total is greater than that of Danowski (183, Duke), Joe Vasta (170, Air Force), Cameron (185), Powell (157), Tony Asterino (136, Siena), and Jordan Wolf (120, Duke). Thompson joins Pannell as the only two players in Division I history to have at least 150 goals and 200 assists in their NCAA careers.

Thompson's acceleration to the top of the NCAA career points chart comes after a somewhat pedestrian freshman campaign. In his first run through college lacrosse, Thompson earned six starts and appeared in all 16 of Albany's games, generating 38 points on 22 goals and 16 assists, working primarily from the midfield as the Great Danes were flush at attack. Thompson, however, exploded in his sophomore year when he bumped down to attack: a 113-point campaign in 2013 was followed by a 128-point effort in 2014, the latter standing as the NCAA's gold standard for total points in a season. Thompson's barrage of points over the last few seasons stands in contrast to Pannell's steady climb just a few years ago (Pannell generated 67 points in his initial NCAA season and didn't top 90 points in a campaign until his senior year, a 102-point rock show), and his insane production (Thompson is the only Division I player with two 100-point seasons in a career and is on pace to raise that number to three at the close of 2015) will define his substantial legacy.

With respect to other career records, Thompson is on pace to break the career assists mark in 2015. Entering Albany's date with Bryant, Thompson was averaging 4.09 assists per game and needed to average 4.06 assists per game in a hypothetical 16-game season at the start of the year to break Tim Nelson's Division I mark of 221 helpers. (Nelson, notably, generated his 221 dishes in 57 career games while Thompson has used more than 60 to achieve his accumulated assist total.) With less than two dozen assists needed to pass Nelson, a pedigree that has seen Thompson average four assists per game in his aggregated 2013 and 2014 performances, and at least five games remaining in Thompson's senior rush, Thompson is poised set the standard for dimes in a career before the terminus of Albany's schedule. The attackman's assault on the NCAA's record book is not over yet.