Pete Maravich
LSU's Pete Maravich averaged 44.2 points per game for his career, including a 69-point effort against Alabama on Feb. 7, 1970. (AP photo)
Forty-five years ago today, inside a jam-packed Memorial Coliseum in Tuscaloosa, Pete Maravich made college basketball history.
Maravich set an NCAA Division I record with 69 points in a 106-104 loss to Alabama on Feb. 7, 1970. The 6-foot-5 LSU senior known as "Pistol Pete" connected on 26 of 57 field-goal attempts that Saturday afternoon, and went 17 of 21 from the free-throw line.
LSU came into that game 12-5 on the season, while Alabama -- not yet the national power it would become in the mid-1970s under coach C.M. Newton -- was scuffling along at 5-12. The Crimson Tide led 44-40 at halftime, having held Maravich to 22 points -- about half of his average.
LSU's Pete Maravich puts up a jumper over Alabama's Jimmy Hollon during his 69-point game against Alabama on Feb. 7, 1970. (LSU athletics photo)
The fireworks began in the second half. Maravich poured in 47 points after the break, and was also at the center of a brawl that apparently began when he mistook a congratulatory gesture from a court-side photographer for a shove. The ensuing fracas led to several Alabama football players coming out of the stands to join in, according to the Feb. 8, 1970 edition of the Florence Times-Daily.
Alabama -- paced by 30 points from guard Jimmy Hollon -- took the lead for good at 76-74 with nine minutes remaining, and led by as many as five in the late going. Maravich made an uncontested layup with five seconds left to finish with 69 points, breaking the previous record of 68 set by Niagara's Calvin Murphy in 1968.
Maravich's scoring outburst against Alabama was far from an outlier. He torched the Tide for 58 points as a sophomore in 1968 and 55 points in 1969, and also netted 66 points against Tulane as a junior before posting senior-season point totals of 64 vs. Kentucky, 61 vs. Vanderbilt and 53 vs. Ole Miss in a career that saw him average an NCAA-record 44.2 points per game.
LSU went 22-10 in 1969-70, finishing second in the SEC behind Kentucky with a 13-5 conference mark. The Tigers made the NIT (only one team from each conference made the NCAA tournament at the time), winning twice before falling to Marquette 101-79 in the semifinals.
The box score from Pete Maravich's 69-point game against Alabama on Feb. 7, 1970, in Tuscaloosa. (box score from Florence Times-Daily via Google news archive)
Maravich's single-game record stood until 1991, when U.S. International's Kevin Bradley poured in 71 points in a 186-140 loss to Loyola Marymount. (Furman's Frank Selvy holds the all-time NCAA record with 100 points in a 1954 game, albeit against a Division II opponent, Newberry College).
Maravich's career scoring average is still the NCAA record by nearly 10 points, ahead of Austin Carr's 34.6 points per game for Notre Dame from 1968-71. His 3,667 career points (compiled in only three seasons because freshmen were not eligible at the time) are more than 400 more than the No. 2 player on the list, Portland State's Freeman Williams (3,249 points from 1974-78).
Maravich's prolific scoring is perhaps more astounding when you remember he did it all without a shot clock or a 3-point basket. College basketball would not institute the shot clock until 1985; with the 3-pointer following a year later.
Maravich went on to play 10 years in the NBA with the Atlanta Hawks, New Orleans/Utah Jazz and Boston Celtics, earning five All-Star berths before retiring in 1980. He died as a result of a congenital heart defect at age 40 after collapsing during a pick-up game in 1988.
Here are a pair of video clips of Maravich in action, one from a game against Alabama (albeit in Baton Rouge, not his 69-point game in Tuscaloosa) and the other various highlights from his college career: