The Ace Baldwin stat to follow this year
All-time records are fun
In the department of Fun Stats To Follow, Penn State guard Ace Baldwin is currently leading active players with 274 career steals with a chance to run down Top 10 all-time status.
Baldwin had spent most of last year in the No. 3 spot, but the graduation of New Mexico’s Jaelen House and Mary Hardin-Baylor’s [whatever that is] Josiah Johnson opened the door for Baldwin to take over the top spot.
It’s an interesting subplot to follow this year as Baldwin has a chance to crack into some fairly rarified air. Over the previous four years Baldwin has accumulated 55, 61, 67 and a whopping 88 steals last season alone. With three already on the books in Penn State’s season opener, he is *technically* on pace for over 100, although that pace isn’t terribly reasonable. For context, Baldwin had a steal in all but three games last year and had three or more steals in 16 games, or roughly half the season.
In any case, if Baldwin simply gets to, let’s say - 51 - it will mean Baldwin will crack into the Top 30 All-Time in career steals [50 steals would bring his total to 31st all-time.] If he were to get closer to last season’s total - we’ll say 80 steals - that would bring him to 351, eighth all-time.
Yes, he would have the advantage of a five year career, but four other players on the list did the same, so he wouldn’t be the unicorn on the list.
As a side note, Penn State doesn’t list Baldwin’s career totals within its own program records. This sort of makes sense since most of his steals happened at VCU, but if he ends up being a Top 10 all-time steals leader, it’ll be weird to just ignore that, especially since he would already have the program record. How schools recognize players’ career achievements in a transfer portal world is a different conversation for a different day.
If Baldwin matches last year’s totals he’ll at least finish in the Top 10 with Penn State associated steals alone with something around 175. So either way he should end up on the list.
In any case, something fun to follow.
