TONY SUSUICO’S 113-POINT GAME

It was an outdoor game at the old Paseo basketball courts (where the current Chamorro Village parking lot is adjacent to the stadium) in 1973 when one of Guam’s basketball legends scored 113 points in a game in the All-District Basketball League: Agat vs. Sinajana. Tony Susuico describes that day 40 years later.

Nothing special, really (about the morning of the game). Just my regular routine. I had this ritual where I wake up in the morning and say my prayers and start thinking about the game that’s going to happen later on. I had all the homeboys usually coming up to my house – three, four, five of the guys and we’ll walk do to the village court and start messing around with our shots and wait for the other guys to show up. We had a pretty good following then…every game, whether we were playing a good team or a weaker team in the league.

Fortunately for us, we had my teammate and pare, the late Reverend John Kinsella, who I consider one of the better guards in Guam. We were just trying to keep up with the tradition because for over a decade, Agat was always champions. For some reason, we had some good players to look up to, we had a good fan base and we had the support of the community.

It was a magical day! Anything I put up just went in. It was a little bit windy, so with an outside court you have to do a little trigonometry because the wind influenced your shots. My percentage was really, really good. It was just unbelievable. I must’ve shot 80%. Of course, a lot of it was off of steals and some long, long shots. I could’ve scored more if we had three-pointers at the time, but there were no (three-point lines).

Just like every other game, they double-teamed me, they triple-teamed me. Somehow I managed to just get hot and continued to get hotter and hotter. By halftime, I had almost 70 points. That’s when we decided to see if we can score as many points as we could.

Everybody had a chance to play like usual. I sat down for a little while in the first half and second half. Everybody gets to play, that was the fun part of our team. It was more of the adrenaline that was flowing that I could’ve gone another 10 more minutes. The magic was still there. I could’ve scored more points. It wasn’t planned, it just happened.

That was the season I averaged 41.8 points a game. I had some 70-point games, I had some 50-point games and some 40-point games. I would just play a half and I’d already get my average so then it will give a chance for the other guys to play.

It never really sunk in until 18 years later when my oldest son (Tony) was going to junior high school in Nevada and, believe it or not, when he said his name was Tony Susuico, one of his teachers said, “I have something to show you son”.  And for some reason, the teacher kept the article with him and showed it to my son and his class and it was about that game.

I make a little bit of fun about that particular game. They’d ask me who were we playing at the time and I’d say something like “the nuns from the Agat church’ or something. It’s something incredible and unbelievable, but the thing I treasure more than that game is winning back-to-back (South Pacific Games) gold medals later on (in 1975 and 1979). I just feel blessed.

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