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With Shaquille O'Neal just retired from the NBA as this is written, we look back at his career at LSU. Let's start at the beginning - Coach Dale Brown's first meeting with Shaq.

• Dale was at a military base in West Germany teaching a clinic for the U.S. Army. He spoke to the officers on leadership and enlisted men on teamwork.
• He also did one basketball skills clinic. Right after his lecture, a young man about 6'7" came to him. He asked Brown to recommend some exercises for his legs because, as big as he was, he could not dunk.
• After Dale demonstrated some exercises, he asked the young man how long he had been in the service. "Coach, I'm only thirteen years old," he replied. Of course, it was Shaquille O'Neal, whose stepfather was an Army sergeant.
• As Brown recounts, "I'm no dummy. 'Is your father around?' I asked." Shaquille took Brown to his father.
• Brown introduced himself as the head coach at LSU and told Philip Harrison that he thought his son could develop into a player. "I want to keep in touch."
• Harrison wasn't impressed. He told Brown he was more interested in his son's academic development than his basketball abilities. "If you are interested in my son's educational and intellectual capabilities, we might talk someday," he told Dale.
• Brown assured him that he agreed with that philosophy 100%.

Dale did indeed keep in touch.

• Shaquille suffered the same setback that Michael Jordan had undergone several years earlier - he was cut from his school team in his sophomore year.
• Brown didn't see O'Neal play until Sergeant Harrison had been transferred to San Antonio. Dale went to Texas to watch a summer league game. LSU was the only major school represented in the stands.
• "It was obvious that Shaquille was raw. He could run and could block shots, but the game was not yet part of him. But you could also tell he had a great attitude." Dale was also ipressed by the demeanor of both the father and the mother.
• As a senior, Shaq led Cole High School to the state championship. "He had really developed into a player and everyone around the country started showing up to recruit him. Fortunately, Shaquille didn't forget that we had been there fro the beginning. He came for a campus visit and was a perfect gentleman."
• Dale: "It was probably the most clean and honorable, simplistic recruiting effort I have ever dealt with. Everyone was above-board, everything was strict and everything was disciplined. There was no attempt to drag it out and get more publicity. Shaquille signed early. I really thought this family should be the beacon light for everyone with a son being recruited ... In all of my recruiting of high profile players, never have I ever met a family that was less complicated, or more determined to do things exactly by the rules." Brown repeated that sentiment at Shaq's press conference announcing his retirement from the NBA.

Still, O'Neal's career in TigerTown was not all smooth sailing.

Reference: Tiger in a Lion's Den: Adventures in LSU Basketball, Dale Brown with Don Yeager (1994)
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Coach Dale Brown "became fond" of Philip and Lucille Harrison, Shaq's parents.

• Philip would call Dale for advice.
• Whenever the LSU cheerleaders would go to San Antonio for a contest, the Harrisons would host them for a barbecue.
• When Dale traveled to the Alamo City, Philip picked him up at the airport. "He always greeted me with great big bear hugs."

Still, as Shaq's career took off, Philip "became more involved, more opinionated and more critical."

• The parental meddling "began to disrupt our efforts to teach him some different scoring moves. [Shaq] was not one hundred percent interested in shooting the hook or the turnaround jumper. He knew he was so big and powerful that he could dunk almost all the time."
• Dale tried to convince the big guy that he would get double- and tripled-teamed in the SEC and needed to diversify his game. To that end, the coach "arrnaged for two of the greatest players to ever play the game, Bill Walton and Kareem Abdul Jabbar, to come in and tutor him. (The NCAA, in its great wisdom, has now eliminated this teaching tool.)"
• Bill worked with Shaq on his post-up moves and passing. Kareem tried to teach O'Neal his famous hook shot. "Even with both of those all-stars teaching Shaquille, I noticed that he was barely interested."

Shortly afterwards, Mr. Harrison called Dale.

• "Coach, why did you bring in Jabbar and Walton to work with Shaquille?"
• Dale explained the obvious, that these were two of the greatest centers to ever play the game. "I want to make sure, as we work to develop Shaquille, that I don't leave any stone unturned."
• Then Philip made a surprising comment. "Coach, I would prefer Shaquille use his power and dunk everything he can."
• Taken aback, Dale replied, "Philip, you said I was to be Shaquille's father away from home as well as his coach. You've given me that leeway, and I think that has worked well for Shaquille's best. Let's leave it that way."
• As Dale concludes, "He got the message and never questioned me again."

O'Neal joined the LSU team for the 1989-90 season.

• Brown had put together back-to-back Top Ten recruiting classes, headed by Chris Jackson in '88-89 and Shaq and another 7-footer, Stanley Roberts, the next year.
• As a result, LSU fans' expectations as O'Neal's freshman season began were over the top, exacerbated by the Tigers' #2 in the preseason AP poll.
• Talented but inexperienced, LSU couldn't live up to the hype. Still, the season was by no means a failure.
• The Tigers finished 23-9, 12-6 in the SEC. They defeated Villanova 70-63 in the first round of the NCAA tournament before bowing to Georgia Tech, 94-91. Tech would make it to the Final Four.
• Shaq made the AP, UPI, and Coaches All-SEC team.

To be continued ...

LSU suffered several setbacks prior to Shaq's sophomore season (1990-1).

• Chris Jackson elected to enter the NBA draft. Stanley Roberts and Maurice Williamson fell victim to academic problems.
• That left only one real star on the team - Shaquille O'Neal, who dominated the U.S. Olympic Festival that summer.

Coach Dale Brown crafted an ambitious schedule predicated on having his full arsenal of players.

• Early in the season, LSU hosted #2 Arizona, which boasted a trio of big men in the person of Bryan Williams, Ed Stokes, and Sean Rooks.
• If nothing else, Coach Lute Olsen would use his bigs to foul out Shaquille in the first ever hardwood meeting between the two schools.
• No such luck. O'Neal scored 29 (a career high at the time), collected 14 rebounds, blocked 6 shots, and even made 5 steals in the 92-82 victory. Shaq played the last minutes with four fouls. As Olsen commented after the game, any official who fouled out Shaq wouldn't have escaped the Maravich Center alive.
• Laker great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, in town to tutor Shaq on pivot play, watched in admiration.

More big victories followed in the 20-10 season.

• For the second year in a row, the run-and-gun Lions of Loyola-Marymount came to Baton Rouge and left with a defeat. This one was 122-114, a slow pace after 148-141 in OT the year before.
• On February 5, the Tigers hosted #10 Kentucky and prevailed 107-88.
• Unfortunately, Shaq suffered a stress fracture in his leg in the second-to-last regular season game at Florida. The 79-66 victory clinched a co-championship for the Tigers.
• Without Shaq, LSU lost the finale at Mississippi State that allowed the Bulldogs to tie for the regular season crown.
• Shaq also missed the opening SEC Tournament game, a 92-77 loss to Auburn.
• He returned for the NCAA Tournament game against Connecticut at Minneapolis. He was far from full strength in the 79-62 defeat.
• O'Neal earned College Player of the Year from every wire service and publication.

LSU got a bonus when Shaq returned for his junior year.

• With even less talent surrounding Shaq than in 1990-1, Brown, who, like Les Miles, could never please a certain percentage of the fans (if he won, it was because of superior talent; if he lost, it was because he couldn't coach - sound familiar?), coaxed a 21-10 record, including 12-4 in the SEC.
• LSU lost a crucial game at Arkansas in the second-to-last regular season contest. With the score tied and seconds to play, LSU inbounded under the opponent's basket. As Nolan Richardson admitted later, the Razorbacks intentionally fouled O'Neal, a poor FT shooting, knocking him to the floor. Yet veteran official John Clougherty choked on his whistle. I remember not even watching the OT, knowing LSU had no chance. The 106-92 loss kept the Tigers from the championship.
• The first game of the SEC tournament produced a brawl that led to Shaq's suspension from the second game against Kentucky.
• Once again, he was SEC Player of the Year and All-American.
• The NCAA committee rigged the pairings to set up a second round matchup between LSU and Indiana after the Tigers beat BYU in a game in which Shaq set a tournament record with 11 blocks. The Tigers started fast against the Hoosiers, but Bobby Knight's crew won 89-79 in Shaq's last game in Tigertown.

Orlando selected O'Neal with the #1 pick in the 1992 NBA draft. Three years later, the Magic made the finals.

Following his retirement from the NBA after the 2010-11 season, LSU announced that a statue of O'Neal would be erected at the entrance to the new basketball practice facility. He is the first LSU athlete in any sport to have a statue on campus, a fact that upset supporters of Pete Maravich.

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As happened every year when the Tigers played in the Parker Agricultural Coliseum, they finished the season on the road in 1969, playing their last five away from Baton Rouge.

• Junior All-American Pete Maravich went into the final game at Georgia with an opportunity to break his own single season scoring record set the year before when he averaged 43.8 ppg.
• Pistol Pete needed to can 49 points in the finale to eclipse his own record.
• The SEC didn't play a post-season tournament during his time at LSU, and the Tigers needed to win the final game to finish 13-13, hardly a record that would gain the attention of the NCAA or NIT selection committees.
• Pete had the nation's scoring title locked up as he was 10 ppg ahead of his nearest pursuers, Rick Mount of Purdue and Calvin Murphy of Niagara.
• A crowd estimated at 13,000 overflowed the arena that sat 10,500.

Pete was aided in his quest for a new record by a scintillating double OT shootout in Athens.

• Leading the Tigers back from a 15-point deficit, he scored 24 of LSU's last 29 points, including 13 straight in a surge that sent the Tigers into the lead, 72-70, after they trailed 59-44.
• Georgia's Jerry Epling hit a jump shot at the buzzer to send the game into OT. Les Robinson, a coaching friend of Press Maravich who attended the game, said, "The crowd starts cheering [when the game went into OT]. They don't care who wins. They came to see a show."
• As the clock wound down in the second OT, Georgia held a 2-point lead. As Epling tried to run out the clock, Robinson heard something he has never heard before or since. The crowd started booing the home team. Discombobulated, Jerry took a shot that LSU rebounded. That allowed Pete to flip in a basket with six seconds left to deadlock the game again at 78, sending it to a second OT period.
• The Pistol sank eight straight points to give LSU a safe 87-80 lead, with the Bulldogs scoring only two FTs in the second OT. As time wound down with no shot clock, Pete went into his Marques Haynes Globetrotter act, dribbling through the entire Georgia team. "The fans were going nuts. You could not hear anything," said Bulldog G Herb White, who had fouled out trying to guard Pete.
• As the last seconds elapsed, Maravich dribbled toward the LSU bench and, without breaking stride, threw up a 30-foot hook shot for his 57th and 58th points. "The ball hit the bottom of the net without touching the rim," said the writer in the State-Times.
• LSU won 90-80 as Pete wiped out his previous record. The fans came out of the stands and carried him off the floor. Pistol told Robinson, "I think it's the greatest game I've ever played."

Maravich finished the season with 1,148 points for a 44.18 average. His 2,286 points for two seasons set another all-time record (that still stands like the points-per-game record and will probably never be broken).

LSU scorebook for the Georgia game

LSU scheduled a regular season game in the Superdome in two consecutive seasons, 1989 and 1990. Both turned out to be scintillating games before large crowds.

This article deals with the first of the two, against Georgetown January 28, 1989.

• John Thompson's 15-1 Hoyas were ranked #2 as they played their first game in the Dome since their one-point loss to North Carolina in the 1982 NCAA championship game.
• Dale Brown's Tigers sported a 13-5 record, including four in a row as they headed to New Orleans.
• The Saturday afternoon game attracted 54,321 despite four Mardi Gras parades in the area. The attendance ranked as the largest ever to watch a regular-season college basketball game and second only to the 57,607 at the 1987 Final Four in the Dome.
• The game was televised nationally by CBS, which worried that the game would not be competitive. Brown later wrote:

We had been hit hard with injuries and some prop-48 casualties, and the Hoyas were so strong that year that CBS ... had called us and gave us the offer of dropping the game since it was such a mismatch. This only made us more determined to play.

The contest promised to be a duel between freshman sensations.

• Chris Jackson, leading the nation in scoring, had attracted attention with 53 points in his SEC debut at Florida in December.
• C Alonzo Mourning contributed strong rebounding and shot blocking to the Hoyas.

The back and forth game saw LSU leading 44-41 at halftime.

• Then the Tigers built a 65-55 lead with 9:13 left in the game.
• Charles Smith and New Orleans native Jared Jackson with 6 each led a 17-6 run to brought the Hoyas to 72-71 with 4:38 left.
• GU's run was aided by LSU going cold from the FT line. The Tigers missed five in a row, including three front ends of one-and-ones.
• The teams battled nip-and-tuck the rest of the way as the game was tied eight times with 14 lead changes.

Georgetown tied it at 80 when Charles Smith made the second of two FTs with 20 seconds left to set up a wild finish.

• With the Hoyas pressing, Jackson got the ball into the front court but was swarmed by three defenders. Chris managed to get the ball to Russell Grant, a walkon from Louisville who launched a jump shot just outside the 3 point arc with 6 seconds left. Mourning got a tiny piece of the ball, causing it to land short.
• Players from both teams fought for the rebound, which LSU C Wayne Sims deflected into the hands of 6' 6" F Ricky Blanton under the goal. He put the ball in the basket with two seconds left to send the throng into delirium.

Chris Jackson won the frosh scoring battle.

• Chris netted 26, far exceeding Mourning's 9. However, Alonzo's 13 rebounds keyed Georgetown's 46-26 edge on the boards.
• Sims added 24 for the Tigers while Blanton had 14 and Vernel Singleton, 11.
• Smith led all scorers with 32 while Jared Jackson threw in 28.

Brown praised his warriors afterwards.

If you took our talent and matched it up against Georgetown's, maybe we shouldn't have even shown up for the game. But I have my own poll. I don't care whether we're ranked by the wire services. I have a poll for desire and a poll for hustle and a poll for love, and we're No. 1 in all of those.

• Dale said Blanton's basket was typical of his play all year.

This guy is a fighter. He just will not quit. Maybe in the NBA drafted on heart, there wouldn't be so many people just standing around in their games. Ricky would be a No. 1 draft choice if they drafted on heart.

Thompson said the crowd noise didn't bother his team, which lost a chance to move to #1 following Minnesota's upset of Illinois earlier in the week.

To tell the truth, I think the noise has a greater effect in a smaller arena.

The 1988-9 Tigers finished the season 20-12, 11-7 in the SEC. They lost to Texas-El Paso in the first round of the NCAA tournament.