Ball State career points leaders (years at BSU)
1. Tamara Bowie (2000-03) -- 2,091
2. Nathalie Fontaine (2012-present) -- 2,069
3. Kate Endress (2002-05) -- 1,843
4. Emily Maggert, (2007-11) -- 1,708
5. Johna Goff, (2001-04) -- 1,635
A wide grin spread across senior guard Nathalie Fontaine’s face as she walked off the court after Ball State won on the road at Eastern Michigan, 67-63, last Saturday.
The smile wasn’t because of the first-round bye the Cardinals secured with the victory, nor did it result from posting her 16th double-double of the season.
Instead, it was the small, bushy head of hair that blocked the words “Ball State” on her jersey that sparked the smile as she carried her nephew toward the locker room.
Fontaine, one of Ball State’s 19 international athletes, hails from Stockholm, Sweden, and her mother, sister and nephew made the trip to Muncie to be at her final career home game.
“They follow all of the games online, so they’ve seen me play my whole college career,” Fontaine said. “They just haven’t seen it live.”
Watching online, Fontaine’s family has seen her climb up the Ball State record book – she is just 23 points away from breaking Tamara Bowie’s (2000-2003) all-time scoring record of 2,091 career points.
Fontaine has only made 17 career three-point shots. In head coach Brady Sallee’s system, she primarily plays in the post. Sallee said that Fontaine can shoot from outside, he just doesn’t ask her to do it often.
“When I can get where we want to go – doing it the easy way – why break something that’s not needed?” he said. “She’s so dominant in those other positions, I hated – I didn’t want to take the efficiency out of her game and make her think about playing out on the perimeter.”
Instead, he said, she works her way to the free-throw line.
“She’s had plenty of the old-fashioned three-point plays,” he said.
Fontaine already owns the career record for most free-throws made in a career with 514 – 97 more than the previous record set by Julie DeMuth (2005-08).
This season, she leads the Mid-American Conference and is 11th in the National Collegiate Athletic Association with 155 free-throws.
Fontaine is also second in the MAC with 20.9 points per game (22nd NCAA) despite not making a single three-point shot this season.
Though she’d need an above-average night to break the record tonight against Northern Illinois, a team that held her to 19 points in DeKalb, Ill., on Feb. 17, she set the Ball State single-game record with 43 points at the University of Evansville on Dec. 21.
She has also scored 23 or more points in nine different games this season, including the record-setting night in Evansville.
Still, Fontaine said she tries not to think about her career point total.
“I heard it from a lot of different directions but I didn’t really wanna to think about the record, but more so just winning games,” she said. “I think thinking that way has helped me a lot, just being more relaxed out there and not really having a lot on my mind other than just winning games. And then the points just kind of came with it.”
For Senior Night against Northern Illinois, she said she won’t be thinking about the record either. Instead, she said she’s focused on playing well in front of her family.
“I think it’s actually harder for them having me over here, because they want to see every game and everything,” she said. “So it’s just fun that they get to see a game live – it’s my sister’s first time [and] my mom’s second time seeing a game live.”
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