No. 22 LSU Basketball to Host Ole Miss on 50th Anniversary of Pete Maravich Breaking NCAA Scoring Record

The date is Jan. 30, 1970 and "Pistol" Pete Maravich needs 40 points to break the NCAA scoring record. The Tigers SEC opponent that day? Ole Miss.

Maravich had spent his three-year, 88-game career razzling and dazzling LSU fans all over the state with his never-before-seen moves that became synonymous with his name. That night in the "Cow Palace," Maravich dropped 53 points and added 12 assists in a 113-90 win over the Rebels, punching his ticket into the history books.

For his career, Maravich scored 3,667 points, a 44.2 point per game average that didn't include a three-point line. It has been reported that former LSU coach Dale Brown even charted every bucket Maravich scored and concluded that if the three-point line existed back then, Maravich's average would have totaled 57 points per game.

The legend of Maravich and his time at LSU resonates with all Tiger basketball players that have stepped foot on campus since. Coach Will Wade knows the legacy behind Maravich and feels confident in saying it's a record that will probably never be broken.

"It's a record that probably never be broken because anybody who's good enough to start and play as a freshman ain't gonna be here as a senior anymore, and that's just the way it goes," Wade said. "This is a record that will go down in history, be something LSU is a part of history forever.

"You look at Bob Pettit, Shaq, look at Pete Maravich, that's three of the top-50 players of all time," Wade said. "It's part of our tradition, we have a storied tradition, we have a great tradition which is why we've won the second most SEC titles to Kentucky. I always tell our players you can drink from the well but don't forget who dug it."

Wade talks everyday with his players about the legends of the past and what this LSU team has the potential to do to mark their names in the Tiger history books.

"We talk about how as a team you want to be special, you want to leave a legacy," Wade said. "We have a lot of things on the table with this team. We want to be a program that consistently competes at the top of this league and so we've got a lot things out there in front of us over the next five weeks to play for."

Maravich's record is one that still stands 50 years and day later and Saturday the 2019 LSU basketball team will be facing the very same team Maravich broke that record all those years ago.

The Tigers happen to be in a very similar circumstance they were in last season, when the team went 16-2 in conference play and won an SEC title. In 2018, LSU started SEC play 7-0 and was upset at home by Arkansas, a team it had already beaten on the road earlier in the month.

This season, LSU once again has started SEC play 7-0 and will host Ole Miss (10-10, 1-6), a team it beat two weeks ago, Saturday morning at 11 a.m.

Wade said the loss to Arkansas was on him because he felt the team as well as himself were too complacent when the Razorbacks strolled into Baton Rouge and stole one last year. Wade revealed that he used the same gameplan four straight outings against Arkansas because it had worked the first three times. The Razorbacks would switch some things up in the fourth meeting that caught the Tigers off guard a bit.

You can bet your money that Wade and the coaching staff won't let that happen again this year against the Rebels.

"There's some things that we've got to change for the Mississippi game, there's two or three things to look at," Wade said. "If you watch their game since us they've used their 1-3-1 more, we're going to be more prepared for that. They played their 2-3 zone, their 2-3 zone baseline out of bounds which they didn't play against us. There's some stuff like that, that you gotta be ready for."

One of the keys will be to not let guard Breein Tyree continue to torch LSU on offense like he did in Oxford two weeks ago. Tyree dropped a career-high 36 points in the 80-76 loss to the Tigers.

"He had 13 points before warmups," Wade joked. "When you look up there at the scoreboard, there's 13 points before we even get settled into the game. We lost him in transition a couple of times. We've got to do a better job of having an awareness on Tyree and then carrying out the gameplan a bit better than we did the first time around."

The Tigers are currently on a nine game win streak and with a win Saturday, would start 8-0 in the SEC for the first time since the 1980-81 season, when LSU rattled off 17 straight conference wins and a Final Four appearance with Dale Brown at the helm.