Trillionaires of College Basketball

The “trillion” is the most irrelevant statistic in all of basketball. This is by design as the metric is meant to measure the irrelevance of a player.

How does one achieve a trillion? Imagine a walk-on at the end of a blow-out college basketball game:

He checks in during the final minute

Fails to record a single stat during the game (no points, rebounds, assists, turnovers, etc.) This would be a one -trillion (a one in the first column of the box score, followed by 12ish zeros) If he had played two minutes, it would be a two trillion… and so on.



On this site, we will explore the most irrelevant bench-warmers in college basketball since the 2010-2011 season (when box-scores became available on Sports Reference). Join me in giving some undeserved attention to these players.

Who totaled the most minutes in their trillion games?

It looks like Phillip Johnson from Incarnate Word is the head of the trillion club with 99 minutes… But wait, is he really?

According to the father of the trillion, Mark Titus, the trillion “loses its value” beyond 4 minutes of action. So, let’s look at how these same players compare in terms of number of trillions recorded, and color each Trillion by its number of minutes:

Phillip Johnson may have dominated the total minutes of trillions, but when we use the ‘No More Than Four’ Rule, we see a new picture. From the graphic above, you can see that PJ had the most 5+ minute games, with 8 to his name – including a stunning 23 trillion against Oklahoma.

So disregarding those 5+ minute games reveals a new champion, Jamel Flash from Towson. Jamel had the most overall trillions of this group with 25, but he also recorded a great amount of 2-4 trillions. Congratulations to Jamel Flash, our OFFICIAL TRILLION CHAMPION!

P.S. Here’s a table with the top 10 by total minutes of trill, disregarding 5+ minute trillions:

Rank Player Minutes 1 J. Flash 42 2 M. Roelke 32 3 D. Peera 31 3 J. Polson 31 5 C. Sager 28 6 B. Price 26 7 N. Musters 24 7 P. Johnson 24 9 D. Hubert 23 10 J. Floyd 16

P.P.S. That 23 trillion by Phillip Johnson wasn’t even the longest one in this time span. A 26 trillion (65% of a game) was accomplished by both Travis Berry of Sacred Heart and Carlton Lowe of Grambling.