Missouri · 2015—2019
How Sophie Cunningham Became Missouri's All-Time Leading Scorer
She arrived in Columbia scoring immediately and left four years later with 2,187 points. The record itself arrived on a losing night in the SEC Tournament, one point at a time.
Career points at Missouri
SEC Tournament semifinal, Greenville
Missouri lost the game. Mississippi State ended the Tigers' SEC Tournament in the semifinal, and the season had four days left in it before the NCAA Tournament began. Sophie Cunningham scored 33 points, and on a jumper late in the first quarter she went past a number that had stood at the top of the programme's record book since long before she was born in Columbia: Joni Davis's 2,126 career points.
She had come into the night on 2,125, one point behind, after 30 against Kentucky in the quarterfinal the day before. It is a strange way for a scoring record to arrive — on a night the team is eliminated, in a building the season is ending in. Cunningham walked off with 2,157 career points, the most anyone had scored for Missouri women's basketball, and a defeat.
The route to it had been unusually direct. She did not need three seasons to become a scorer.
The first ten days
First college game, vs Missouri State
23points
Her opening game as a freshman for Missouri.
Fourth college game, vs Wake Forest
42points
A Missouri single-game scoring record, nine days after the first game.
November 2015: 23 points, then 42
Her first college game was on 13 November 2015. She scored 23 points in it. Nine days later, against Wake Forest on 22 November, she scored 42 — a Missouri single-game record, in the fourth game of her college career. Cunningham needed four college games to produce the first 40-point performance in the programme's modern record book.
She was a Columbia player at the university in Columbia. She had won four consecutive state championships at Rock Bridge High School a short drive from the arena, her parents had both competed for Missouri, and her older sister Lindsey was already in the Tigers' backcourt when she arrived. The 42-point game did not lower any expectations.
She was named SEC Freshman of the Year that season, and she started. That last detail turns out to matter more than any single scoring night: she started all 129 games she played for Missouri, across four seasons, without a game missed on the bench.
Four seasons of the same job
A career total is mostly arithmetic done slowly. Cunningham scored 14.0 points a game as a freshman, 17.5 as a sophomore, 18.5 as a junior and 17.8 as a senior. Nothing in that sequence is dramatic. What it does is accumulate: four seasons at that level, every one of them as a starter, and Missouri in the NCAA Tournament each time.
Two habits carried most of the volume. She shot .839 from the free-throw line in college and finished as the programme's all-time leader in free throws made, with 537 — a statistic produced by four years of driving into contact rather than by any single night. And she shot from range: 238 three-pointers made from 590 attempts, second in Missouri history for makes.
By her senior season she was the most recognisable player in the building. The record was no longer a question of whether but of when.
Four years of scoring
Points per game
- 2015–16
- 14.032 games
- 2016–17
- 17.531 games
- 2017–18
- 18.531 games
- 2018–19
- 17.835 games
Drawn proportionally from zero. Her scoring did not climb every year — the peak came as a junior, and the senior season was slightly lower — but it settled high in her first season and stayed there. Career: 17.0 points a game across 129 games.
The record night
33 points, past 2,126, and a defeat
SEC Tournament semifinal, Missouri lost to Mississippi StateCunningham scored 33
How the record moved
2,126
Joni Davis — previous record
The Missouri career scoring record, set between 1981 and 1985.
2,127
Cunningham moves ahead
On a jumper late in the first quarter, from 2,125 the night before.
2,157
After the 9 Mar semifinal
Where she stood when she left the floor, having scored 33.
2,187
Final Missouri total
Where the four seasons finished, a few weeks later.
Mississippi State won the semifinal and Missouri's SEC Tournament ended there. The numbers above describe one player's scoring, not the result of the game.
The recaps that night stayed with the arithmetic rather than the ceremony, and this account does the same: the shot that carried her past Davis is reported as a jumper late in the first quarter, and nothing is said here about what she said walking off, because no source consulted records it.
Why two numbers exist
Cunningham finished her Missouri career with 2,187 points, not 2,157. Both figures are real and they are thirty points apart. 2,157 is where she stood when she left the floor in the SEC Tournament semifinal, the night the record changed hands. 2,187 is where the career stopped a few weeks later, after the NCAA Tournament, and that is the number in the record book.
What the record sat on top of
129 games, 129 starts. 17.0 points a game. Four NCAA Tournament appearances in four seasons. In 2019 she was named AP and USBWA Third-Team All-America, which Missouri describes as the first All-America honour in the programme's history.
She also left holding the school's single-game scoring record from that fourth game as a freshman, and the career free-throw record that four years of the same approach produced.
After Columbia
Six weeks after the semifinal, Phoenix drafted her 13th overall, the highest any Missouri women's basketball player had been taken. The professional career began from a much smaller role than the one she had just finished: six seasons in Phoenix, largely off the bench, then Indiana from February 2025.
Missouri came back to it in 2025. She was announced for the university's Athletics Hall of Fame on 21 April, in her first year of eligibility, and inducted at Mizzou Arena on 12 September — six years after the night in Greenville, and four weeks after a knee injury ended her season in Indiana.
The four Missouri seasons are still the largest single body of work in her career, and the scoring record is still hers.
Sources
- Missourinet — Cunningham becomes Mizzou's all-time leading scorer
- Columbia Missourian — Cunningham becomes Missouri's all-time leading scorer (9 March 2019)
- St. Louis Post-Dispatch — Mizzou women eliminated; Cunningham sets scoring record (10 March 2019)
- Mizzou Athletics roster bio
- Sports Reference (college basketball)
- HeatingUp college database — Sophie Cunningham college statistics
- Kansas City Star — Cunningham drafted 13th overall by Phoenix (April 2019)
- Mizzou Athletics — Mizzou inducts Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2025 (16 September 2025)
Season figures come from the college databases and reconcile with her career total of 2,187 points. All-SEC records differ: Missouri Athletics lists Cunningham as a three-time All-SEC First Team selection, while Sports Reference records four All-SEC honours. This story does not rely on either count. Sources for every other page are listed on sources and methodology.
Checked 8 September 2026.