It’s the year of the freshman at Niagara University.

First-year point guard Juan’ya Green is on pace to break the Purple Eagles records for points and steals by a freshman, and quickly gaining ground on the assists record.

Antoine Mason, a redshirt freshman who played three games last season before getting hurt, already ranks among the top five freshman scorers in school history, and could wind up with more points or steals than Green at season’s end.

Ameen Tanksley has been a full-time starter in his first year, and redshirt freshmen Joe Thomas and Josh Turner have been contributors off the bench. At times, the Purple Eagles have played five freshmen at once.

But none of these players will ever be remembered as the greatest freshman to ever play for Niagara.

That distinction will always belong to Hall of Famer Calvin Murphy — even though he holds none of the freshman records.

When Murphy arrived on Monteagle Ridge in 1966, NCAA rules prohibited freshmen from playing varsity basketball. Murphy and fellow scholarship recruits Mike Brown, of Lockport, Steve Schafer and Jim Malfetti played on the freshman team with a group of walk-ons, including Niagara Falls natives Tom Monin and Steve Simmons.

“That freshman year was something special,” Murphy said Saturday after speaking to a group of Niagara boosters at Jetport Restaurant. “I was just a wide-eyed little kid out of Norwalk, Conn., happy to be in college and I looked forward to every single game. I used to get butterflies”

Murphy sure didn’t play like he was nervous. He scored 929 points — nearly double the 467-point freshman record Garry Jordan set in 1978 — in just 19 games, for an astonishing scoring average of 48.9. He netted at least 40 points in all but one game (when he had 38) and went for a high of 66 against Hot Dawgs, a local municipal team.

Accounts of Murphy’s freshman performances nicknamed him “The Fastest Shooter on the Niagara Frontier,” “Niagara’s Second Biggest Wonder,” and “The One Who Will Steal All the Peaches out of Doc Naismith’s Basket,” according to university publicity records.

Murphy credited freshman coach Ed Donaghue — the man most responsible for recruiting him to Niagara — and his teammates for his remarkable point totals.

“Ed Donaghue was a tremendous individual, not just as a basketball coach but as a father away from home,” Murphy said. “My teammates understood what this was all about. We were promoting NU basketball. They did all the dirty work and I got to shoot the ball.”

Even though he was gunning on nearly every possession, Murphy was an efficient scorer, shooting 51 percent from the field and 84 percent from the foul line.

“He was responsible for changing the dinner hour in hundreds of Niagara Falls homes on basketball nights,” the Gazette wrote after the season, “with full houses generally on hand early at the NU Student Center for the freshman games, something that had not happened regularly before.”

Said Jerry Wolfgang, former president of the Niagara Boosters Club, “People decided: We need to see Calvin.”

Murphy very much enjoyed the support he got from his freshman classmates during on campus games. Coming out of high school, he preferred to play with his jersey untucked. After the Rev. Kenneth Slattery, university president at the time, sought to silence Murphy’s fashion statement, more than 600 freshman students came to the next game with white shirts hanging free and chanted “Take it out! Take it out!”

When the Purple Eagles played St. Bonaventure at Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium on Jan. 15, 1967, the crowd was as large for the opening game featuring Murphy and Bona’s freshman sensation, Bob Lanier, as it was for the varsity game that followed.

“I remember coming out for the game warmup and looking around like what is this?” Murphy said. “And Bob Lanier said the same thing. It was a varsity crowd for a freshman game.”

Murphy and many others who attended that event fail to recall that another big game was played that day — the very first Super Bowl.

In 1972, the NCAA changed its rules to allow freshman to play varsity basketball. Decades later, freshmen of Murphy’s caliber leave for the NBA after one spectacular season. But Murphy is happy with the way things turned out for him.

“How many freshmen you know averaged 48 points per game?” he said proudly. “I’m old school. I don’t believe that players should go to the pros before college, for educational and basketball purposes. I’m from that era. Whatever was going on during that span of time should have been. I should have been a freshmen player. My freshman year is what allowed me to be nationally recognized. I had great coaches, I was able to make all my mistakes during the freshman campaign, and when I went to the varsity I was full-blast, guns blazing”

Sitting courtside at Friday night’s game at the Gallagher Center, Murphy paid special attention to Green, who is averaging 17.2 points and 4.5 assists through his first 22 games.

“He’s special,” Murphy said. “I’m a pretty good measure of talent and I can see those that have learned on their own and I can see those that have had some pretty good coaching. And somewhere along the line, he’s had some pretty good coaching. A lot of players are athletes. He’s a basketball player. And there’s a big difference.”

Contact sports editor Jonah Bronstein at jonah.bronstein@niagara-gazette.com.