Dale Brown, LSU's winningest basketball coach, dies at 90 - ESPN

LSU basketball coaching icon Dale Brown, who guided the Tigers to two Final Four appearances and whose players included Shaquille O'Neal and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, has died at the age of 90, the school announced Friday.

He was just over a week away from what would have been his 91st birthday.

Brown won a school-record 448 games, four SEC championships and made 13 NCAA tournament appearances in his 25 seasons with the Tigers from 1972 to 1997. He was a four-time SEC Coach of the Year and was named national coach of the year in 1981.

He was selected earlier this week to receive the John R. Wooden Legends of Coaching Award, recognizing his accomplishments and impact on college basketball.

«We have lost the most loving and most loved man any of us has ever known,» his family said in a statement released by LSU. «Dale Brown always put others first. He always led with the heart. He was always a great humanitarian before anything else. Dale long ago fell in love with Louisiana. And the people of Louisiana loved him right back. We are forever grateful for that.»

The panache with which Brown's teams played and the rate at which they won packed LSU's dome-shaped Pete Maravich Assembly Center with crowds so wild that the stadium took on the nickname, «Deaf Dome.»

The Associated Press contributed to this report.