Two nights later on March 17, 1970, Maravich put on a show with 37 points, nine assists and eight rebounds in a quarterfinal, 97-94 win over Oklahoma in front of 19,500 - the largest crowd ever to see him in college. Maravich scored a mere 20 points with five assists and six rebounds in the opener as LSU beat Georgetown, 83-82. Maravich performance in the 1970 NIT Tournament 'For LSU and Pete to go to the NIT was a big deal because Madison Square Garden was the mecca of college basketball,' Baton Rouge native Ron Higgins, a sportswriter around the South over the last four decades, said Monday just outside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, so named in 1988 after Maravich's death. Maravich was happy with it because he would get to play in New York City at Madison Square Garden - a stage worthy of him. The Tigers settled for the National Invitation Tournament (NIT), which at the time was still prestigious.

Just Kentucky, which won the league that year at 17-1, represented the SEC, which will have seven in action this weekend. Only 25 teams made the 1970 NCAA Tournament, though, as opposed to 68 now.

LSU went on to its best season since it won the Southeastern Conference in 1954 as Maravich led the Tigers to a 20-8 regular season and a second-place finish in the SEC at 13-5 in 1969-70. 30, 1969, in the Rainbow Classic in Honolulu, Hawaii, in a 97-94 loss that dropped the Tigers to 7-3. The only previous time LSU played Yale, Maravich was a senior and scored 'only' 34 points on Dec. Thursday in Jacksonville, Florida, on truTV. 5, 1988, at age 40 playing pick-up basketball in Pasadena, California, because of heart failure from a congenital heart defect - one coronary artery instead of two as most people have.īut Maravich never played in the NCAA Tournament, which officially opens Thursday around the country after four play-in games in Dayton, Ohio, on Tuesday and Wednesday. No one has come close before or since to those records of Maravich, who died on Jan.

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