Dale Brown, who turned LSU into a national basketball power and remains the winningest coach in the program’s history, died on October 23, 2026. He was 90, a week short of his 91st birthday.
Twenty-five seasons in Baton Rouge
Born in Minot, North Dakota, on October 31, 1935, Brown arrived at LSU in 1972, taking over a program that had long lived in the shadow of the school’s football team. Over the next 25 seasons he won 448 games, led the Tigers to four Southeastern Conference regular-season championships and took them to 13 NCAA Tournaments.
His teams reached the Final Four twice, in 1981 and again in 1986, when an LSU side seeded 11th made an improbable run to the national semifinals.
Shaq and Chris Jackson
Brown’s most famous recruit was Shaquille O’Neal, whom he met while O’Neal was a teenager living on a US Army base in West Germany. O’Neal went on to become an All-American at LSU before a Hall of Fame professional career. Brown also coached the high-scoring guard Chris Jackson, later known as Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, who set scoring records in Baton Rouge before moving to the NBA.
A final honour
Brown retired in 1997 but remained a familiar figure at LSU. Just two days before his death, the university announced he had been chosen to receive the 2027 John R. Wooden Legends of Coaching Award.
In a statement, his family said: “We have lost the most loving and most loved man any of us has ever known.”