Dale Brown, LSU's winningest men's basketball coach, dies at 90

Dale Brown, who won more games than any men's basketball coach in LSU history, has died at 90. The school announced his death Friday. He was a little more than a week from his 91st birthday.

Brown coached the Tigers for 25 seasons, from 1972 to 1997. He won 448 games, four SEC championships and took LSU to 13 NCAA tournaments, with Final Four trips in 1981 and 1986. He was a four-time SEC Coach of the Year and the 1981 national coach of the year. Earlier this week he was chosen for the John R. Wooden Legends of Coaching Award.

"We have lost the most loving and most loved man any of us has ever known," his family said in a statement released by LSU. "Dale Brown always put others first. He always led with the heart."

His players included Shaquille O'Neal, who spent three seasons at LSU before going first overall to Orlando in the 1992 draft, and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, then known as Chris Jackson. LSU made the NCAA tournament in all three of O'Neal's seasons but never got past the second round. In a video congratulating Brown on the Wooden award this week, O'Neal said, "He made me one of the best basketball players ever."

Brown's teams drew crowds to the Pete Maravich Assembly Center wild enough that the building picked up the nickname "Deaf Dome." The end of his tenure was rougher. The NCAA found that a booster had paid former player Lester Earl about $5,000, and LSU went on probation in 1998, a year after Brown retired. He stayed popular in Louisiana anyway. He went into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, and LSU named its home court for him in 2022.

The SEC said Brown "built LSU Basketball into a national power." Johnny Jones, who called Brown his coach, boss and mentor, wrote that Brown "was like a father to me."