re: Why do you think Shaq didn’t win a Natty at LSU?

Dale Brown

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Indiana ultimately won the game 77-76 on a last-second shot by Bill Laimbeer.


Wait. What?

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Right - Bill Laimbeer played for Notre Dame in the 70s.

Nikita Wilson just missed a potential game winner vs. the Hoosiers. Would've sent the Tigers to the Final Four in the Dome.

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There was the night they met up with Oklahoma and Tisdale and Jose Vargas had the game of his life and handily beat the Sooner

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I was there for that Oklahoma game (which for some reason was at UNO).

The Tigers made the eventual national runner-up look like a high school team.

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We were up 20 in that game.

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No we were not. Where do you people come up with this bumblefrog nonsense?

And Bill Lambeer? Are you sure it wasn’t Kareem Abdul Jabar? Bill Russell?

The short answer is Fess Irvin missing a front end. But this goes much deeper…

LSU was up by 9 with a bit over 4 minutes to play.

Nikita didn’t lose the game but merely was given the ball with six seconds left and missed a tough shot that was about a tenth of a second too late anyway.

Rick Calloway or Darryl Jones made the GW putback with time on the clock. Daryl Joe brought the ball down and dished to Nikita Wilson.

We were never up by 20. 10 at best.

The crying shame is that the game was played at Riverfront in Cincinnati. Had we won the game, we would have played in the Final 4 in the Superdome and may have won it all as we would have played UNLV.

That team got on a roll in the SEC tourney in Atlanta. They had to play opening night and beat Miss State. The next night they majorly upset top 10 and second seed Florida. The next game was against Georgia. LSU had a 25 point lead at one point but lost it drastically and the game went to double OT. LSU won at the Omni. They made the cship game but lost to Derek McKey and One seed Bama. That nice roll got them off bubble and into the tourney as a 10 seed in Chicago.

They opened with GA Tech (who they beat earlier in season at PMAC). Winning that was no surprise but beating 2 seed Temple by 10 was a feat. They made the Sweet 16 and faced a DePaul team that had lost 3 games all season. It was a physical game and LSU pulled away in the last minute. And they were worn out. Indiana was a better team but it was almost magic.

All this said, Bob Knight should have been ejected early. He complained of hand-checking. He touched the ref. He got T’d for that but then proceeded to the scorer’s table where he rammed the telephone. He was not ejected and actually that worked to his advantage. He had successfully intimidated the refs. They called more fouls. Steve Alford had a horrible shooting day, but fouls galore were called on Joe and Woodside and Oliver Brown and it allowed Alford to go to the line about 15 times where he made all shots. Had Knight been ejected - as he should have, LSU would have won easily.

And from that point on, the committee made an effort to try to have a Knight v Brown rematch. The bad press between them only drove it up. In 89, the committee put Brown and Knight in same regional — Indiana a 2 and LSU a ten seed who had to beat UTEP and they’d get to face IU. Didn’t work thanks to Tim Hardaway. In 92, they received their wish as Indians was a 2 and LSU a 7. Shaq humiliated BYU and there would be a second round meeting. Shaq played well but IU beat LSU again.

Shaq didn’t win a natty because:
A. Year one was still all about Chris Jackson. The team had not gelled. Also, whoever did the schedule for that season was nuts. Play Notre Dame in the Superdome (yawner of a game…did not live up to Georgetown part 2) and the very next day, play Alabama in a key SEC game in Tuscaloosa? LSU was overrated from the jump. Kansas, in the preseason NIT, exposed LSU early. And by the time LSU did get rolling and were 18-4 at one point, they collapsed losing to awful Florida and then losing their first SEC tourney game against an equally awful Auburn. And then the NCAA tourney, we were placed in a good bracket but CJ was terrible. 13 points against Villanova and GA Tech. Shaq and Stanley and Vernel carried what they could but CJ was checked out. A shame as LSU was up 22-5 over GT at one point.

B. Soph year…lack of star power to go with Shaq. Vernel was the second best player. Shawn Griggs was a great defensive player but atrocious shooting and was not the hype he was supposed to be. Mike Hansen was good in spots but he had mono which limited him down stretch. Shaq got into so much foul trouble that Geert played more than we would liked. And as usual, lots of injuries and prop 48 types on the bench — Linear Burns, Jamie Brandon, Mo Williamson. Team did not have much depth, despite being co-SEC champs…and once again a first round SEC loss to another awful team….and U Conn blew us out.

C. Very inconsistent team and no idea why. NLU should have beaten us in home opener. Add an embarrassing west coast trip to UNLV and Arizona and a heartbreak loss at home to Louisville and we were playing behind the 8 ball early. But we bounced back. Took number one Duke to wire…too many missed free throws. And then the SEC tourney fiasco where Dale lost his temper, mind, and focus. His post game interview…. Good God. True Shaq was getting hammered and.not just fouled. Arkansas def got their money’s worth. Then, Carlos Groves and UT — getting blown out — capitalized and it cost LSU having Shaq for the next day. LSU maybe beats UK in the chsip in Birmingham. And maybe they get a 3-4 seed instead of a 7 had the Groves incident never occurred. Of course, Dale made it into a huge deal and recommended that Shaq turn pro. By all accounts Shaq would have come back for 92-93. But Daddy Dale hath spoken.

To simply answer OP…LSU basketball was just a snake bitten program. 1986 chicken pox; Nikita Wilson academically ineligibility for a calendar year; Tito Horford situation; Zoran and Blanton car wreck; prop 48 sidelining Roberts, Mo W, and Harold Boudreaux at a time when Vernel was our 6’6’ center; and injuries and injuries. Randy Livingston later on might be the worst. Dale just never had that full deck…lots of valuable individual cards, but never a 52 card deck.

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we started the game on a 17-3 run.

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They way that GT team shot the three that night we could have been up by 30 and they would have come back to beat us. That team was really good, and even so the UNLV team that won it all was unbelievable.

Shaq was 9-12 from the line in that game

Refs calling fouls ??