Over the past few days, ESPN has taken to looking back at the 25-year history of three-point shot, so it seemed only appropriate to give our own rankings of some of the best shooters from distance the SEC has seen since the introduction of the shot in 1986. So in alphabetical order, here is one man’s list.

You Know the SEC's All-Time Three-Point Marksman Would Be On This List

• Barry Booker, Vanderbilt, 1986-89 (246 3FG, 46.0%). Booker arrived in Nashville the same year the three-point shot arrived in college basketball. All he did was establish the conference record for three-point proficiency (minimum 300 attempts) and helped start the Commodores’ streak of three-point field goals. Vandy has made a trey in all 816 games they’ve played since 1986-87, joining UNLV and Princeton as the only three schools to make at least one in every game the arc has existed.
• Pat Bradley, Arkansas, 1996-99 (366 3FG, 40.0%): Bradley arrived on the scene the year after Scotty Thurman departed. Bradley shattered Thurman’s records for makes and attempts and set the SEC record for consecutive games with one three with 60 straight, 13 better than the previous record.
• Travis Ford, Kentucky, 1991-94 (190 3FG, 44.5%): Paired with Jamal Mashburn, the Missouri transfer helped the Wildcats return to the Final Four in 1993. He established the SEC’s single-season three-point percentage mark that season shooting an incredible 52.9% from the arc (101-for-191).
• Shan Foster, Vanderbilt, 2005-08 (367 3FG, 42.1%): While Chris Lofton shined as the league’s pre-eminent three-point marksman, within the same state, Foster more than held his own. Entering his senior year as a 39.7% shooter, Foster made an SEC single-season record 134 threes in 2008 en route to earning SEC Player of the Year.

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News was released Monday that the University of Tennessee has decided to retire the number of one of its greatest all-time players, Allan Houston.  His #20 jersey will be raised to the rafters of Thompson-Boling Arena on March 6 during a pre-game ceremony prior to the annual home rivalry game with Kentucky.  From the years of 1989-93, Houston was a fantastic player for Tennessee, playing for his father Wade all four seasons and averaging 21.9 PPG as a four-time all-SEC performer. 

Houston Was a Fantastic Vol, But He Never Danced

Despite its institutional reputation as a football school, the Vols have extremely stringent criteria for the jersey retirement of basketball players.  They had none prior to Bruce Pearl’s arrival on campus in 2005 — Ernie Grunfield and Bernard King have since been added — but realizing the marketability aspect of honoring the program’s history, the school came up with a set of guidelines which are outlined here:

To receive this honor, a player must achieve TWO of the following:

• First Team All-American
• SEC Player of the Year
• Played on an Olympic Basketball Team
• NBA All-Star

According to Rocky Top Talk, the only former Vols who currently fit those criteria and who are not already honored are Dale Ellis and, of course, Allan Houston.  Interestingly, despite scoring over 2,800 points in his career and finishing second in the SEC to NCAA all-time scoring leader Pistol Pete Maravich (LSU), Houston was never a First Team All-American nor the SEC Player of the Year.  He meets the specifications, though, by virtue of his two NBA All-Star appearances (2000, 2001) and his membership on the 2000 Olympic gold-medal winning Team USA. 

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