Marcus Keene, a point guard for Central Michigan University, scored 44 points against Montana State University last month.

Along with Keene, many other college basketball players have been scoring a lot. It has become a team effort. On Jan. 11, the Iowa State Cyclones played a high-scoring game against the Oklahoma State Cowboys. The teams combined to score a whooping 182 points.

In the first half of this year’s college basketball season, offensive play has been dominant. The Citadel Bulldogs have the highest number of points per game at 95.7. In their highest-scoring game of the season, the team scored 146 points against Johnson University of Florida.

The Grizzlies of Oakland University scored the most points in all of college basketball last year with an average of 86.3 points per game. Their highest-scoring game last year was against Green Bay University and they won with a final score of 111-93. Oakland did not score 90 to 100 points on a consistent basis like Citadel is. They scored about 85 points on average. The Bulldog’s 95-point average is nearly 10 points higher than that of the Grizzlies.

There are many reasons why scoring has shot up in the past year.

One reason is the major contributions of the freshmen this year. Malik Monk of Kentucky and Lonzo Ball of UCLA, two player of the year lookouts, have led their teams to success this season. Ball is the assist leader for UCLA, which is the third in points per game in the NCAA, and he is second in the NCAA in assists with an average of 8.0.

Monk, meanwhile, is the leading scorer for Kentucky with 21.4 points per game. Kentucky is the second-highest scoring team in the NCAA.

This trend may be bad news for fans of strong defense, but most basketball fans love it.