It will be 60 years ago tomorrow that Utah State Basketball All-American Wayne Estes died.
Estes was an All-American basketball player for USU from 1963 to 1965.
On the night of February 8, 1965, Estes played the last game of his college career against Denver University in the Nelson Fieldhouse on the USU campus. Estes, who scored the second-most points in a single-game in school history that night with 48 (trailing his school-record 52 points set a year earlier) eclipsed the 2,000 point mark with his final basket of the game to give him 2,001 points for his career.
With his final basket, Estes at that time became just the 18th player in NCAA history to score 2,000 points.
After the game, Estes and some friends stopped at the scene of a car accident at 400 North, just below the campus. While crossing the street, Estes brushed against a downed high power line and was fatally electrocuted.
In December Estes was included when the College Basketball Hall of Fame announced a new eight-person class to be inducted in 2025.
A native of Anaconda, Montana, Wayne came to Utah State in the summer of 1962 as a great all-around athlete who looked more like a football player and weight thrower in track than a basketball player. (In fact he came to USU on a track and field scholarship.)
However, by the end of his freshman year, Wayne set the USU freshman team scoring record.
As a varsity starter at the beginning of his sophomore season, Wayne would go on to play and start in all 75 games during his Aggie career as he was held under 10 points just once, and wound up with 31 20-point games, 18 30-point games, seven 40-point games and a USU school record 52 points against Boston College during his senior season.
In all, Wayne averaged 20.0 points as a sophomore and helped Utah State to the NCAA Tournament. During his junior year, Wayne upped his scoring average to 28.3 points and again led the Aggies to the NCAA Tournament, this time to the regional semifinals, one of just 16 teams in the nation to advance that far. And during his senior season, Wayne averaged 33.7 points per game, which ranked second in the nation, behind Miami’s Rick Barry.
A consensus All-American as a senior, Wayne still ranks as the third-leading scorer in Utah State history with 2,001 points and is the fourth-leading rebounder in school history with 893. He still holds school records for career points per game at 26.7, free throws made in a career with 469, consecutive 10-point games with 64 in a row, points in a season with 821 as a junior, points per game in a season with his 33.7 average as a senior, points in a game with 52 against Boston College, and rebounds in a game with 28 versus Regis University.
He played at a time when freshmen were not eligible to play varsity basketball. Had he played today’s version of the game, and had he averaged 34 games for four years, he would have finished with 3,631 points. Pete Maravich is college basketball’s all-time scoring leader, with 3,667 points.
Wayne would have likely been a high draft choice in the National Basketball Association in 1965. In those days NBA teams each held territorial rights to players and the Lakers held his draft rights. He became the first player ever to earn first-team All-American honors from the Associated Press before season’s end and was also posthumously named an All-American by Look Magazine, Converse, the Helms Foundation and the Sporting News. In 1967, Wayne was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.