Until Kentucky has another Hall of Famer it has to be Dan Issel,
Issel is the Wildcats' all-time leading scorer with 2,138 points .
All-American twice a school-record 25.7 points per game. As a senior Issel averaged 33.9 points per game. Issel's career at Kentucky coincided with that of
Pete Maravich at SEC rival
LSU, who scored an NCAA-record 3,667 points (44.2 per game). Maravich and Issel finished 1–2 in SEC Player of the Year voting in each of their three seasons. Voted ABA
Rookie of the Year in 1971, he was a 7x-time
All-Star. He is the second-leading scorer of all time for the NBA's Denver Nuggets, and the second-leading scorer of all time for the ABA itself. When Issel retired from the NBA in 1985,
Wilt Chamberlain,
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and
Julius Erving were the only professional basketball players to have scored more career points. In 1993, Issel was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Issel was inducted into the University of Kentucky Athletics Hall of Fame in 2005. In 2006, Issel was inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame.