LSU Welcomes Back 1986 NCAA Final Four Team Saturday To Maravich Center

BATON ROUGE — It is a special day Saturday for LSU Basketball as it welcomes back former players for Alumni Day when the Tigers host Missouri at 2:30 p.m. in the Maravich Center.

Many members of the LSU Basketball family will be on hand to get together and talk about the good old days when they dribbled a basketball on the courts of LSU.

And it is especially exciting to welcome back the members of the 1986 LSU men’s basketball team and Coach Dale Brown. It was 40 years ago that the Tigers, the 11th seed, won four games and advanced to the NCAA Tournament. At that time they were the first team seeded as low as 11 to advance all the way to basketball’s most prestigious event.

This team made it with the lowest of odds and a little luck on their side.

Now somewhere there is an old NCAA committee member laughing at the remembrance that LSU barely made the tournament as an at-large selection and found itself playing in the Assembly Center against much higher ranked teams.

They call it the LSU rule. Can’t do that anymore, no matter your seeding.

First round opponent Purdue wasn’t laughing. Especially when the Tigers won late into the night. The game went into double OT with the Tigers playing in front of a charged-up arena full of Tigers fans, who had been revving up all day waiting for their chance to yell for their team. A neutral site for an NCAA Tournament? Not here. Not that year.

Then came an even unhappier Memphis team and how many thousands to this day claim to have been there for a miraculous shot heard throughout the college basketball world at the buzzer by Anthony Wilson that gave LSU an 83-81 win.

“The shot was probably the defining moment of the tournament for us,” shot maker Wilson said in previous interview. “I remember there was a mad scramble for the ball by several people. Ricky (Blanton) and Don (Redden) also went after it. I happened to be the one to come up with it. I just let it go and it happened to go in.”

It was the time of the freak defense of Coach Brown and the will to do what no one thought possible. No one but Coach Brown and his Tigers. It was things like a sophomore guard (Blanton) who would have to bulk up and play center that mattered. It was overcoming a chickenpox scare. It was a belief and a drive that Tigers fans watched and clung to with joy.

The run continued through Atlanta and wins over Georgia Tech and Kentucky, a Wildcat team that had already defeated LSU three times. But in the NCAA Regional Finals, the Tigers prevailed and were on their way to Dallas

It was a run to remember all kick started by a weekend of Deaf Dome Magic at the Assembly Center.

The members of the 1986 Final Four Tigers:

Coaches – Dale Brown, Ron Abernathy, Bo Bahnsen, Johnny Jones; Trainer – Dr. Marty Broussard
Players – Ricky Blanton, Oliver Brown, Neboisha Bukumirovich, Chris Carrier, Ocie Conley, Zoran Jovanovich, Malcom Myer, Don Redden, Derrick Taylor, Jose Vargas, John Williams, Anthony Wilson, Edwin Wilson, Nikita Wilson, Bernard Woodside
Student Trainers/Managers – Gregg Francis, Fabian Roussel; Robert Vitanza; Gerry “GMan” Gandy

The team will gather Friday night for a reception and then join the Tipoff Club for their pregame event on Saturday before being introduced to the crowd at the LSU-Missouri game at halftime.

Tickets are available at LSUTix.net and one hour prior to tipoff at the upper concourse ticket windows of the Maravich Center.

(Release via LSU Athletics)