On January 4, 2022, Louisiana State University plans to bestow a very special honor to Minot native and College Basketball Hall of Famer Dale Brown.

Dale Brown Court will be officially unveiled inside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center when the LSU men’s basketball team takes on the Kentucky Wildcats early next year. Brown coached the Tigers men’s team from 1972-1997. During that time, Brown led the program to a pair of Final Four appearances, four Southeastern Conference regular season titles and an SEC championship in 1980.

A Minot State alumnus, Brown also won SEC Coach of the Year honors a total of four times during his tenure at Louisiana State. According to Brown, he states that it was never a goal of his to earn such prestigious personal recognition.

“I just wanted to build LSU into a powerhouse program,” Brown tells The Minot Daily News. “In 44 years of coaching, I never planned on winning coach of the year or going to the Hall of Fame or having a court named after me. I’m very appreciative of all the accolades, but it won’t change my life much, I’m still the same.”

Now 86, Brown reveals that his journey toward coaching immortality started with very humble beginnings. Along with two older sisters, Brown and his siblings were raised by his mother Agnes in a single-parent home. With his family on welfare and no father in the home, Brown began working at the age of 10.

“Eventhough I grew up in poverty, there was a richness in my life provided by my wonderful mother,” Brown adds.

Doing anything he could to earn money, the future collegiate basketball coach delivered papers, washed windows and swept floors to help his family get by. One of his most memorable jobs as a youth came when he was a batboy for the Minot Mallards, a local semi-pro baseball team in the 1940s. It was during that time that he got to see pitching legend Satchel Paige in action.

Brown attended St. Leo’s High School where his interest in sports continued. There, he played football, basketball and ran track before graduating in 1953. As a college athlete, the Magic City native attended Minot State where he earned 12 varsity letters between his three favorite sports. Brown would graduate from Minot State in 1957 and soon after, began his career as a basketball coach.

One of his earliest coaching memories came during his tenure as the head basketball coach at Bishop Ryan High School. An opposing player from Williston by the name of Phil Jackson proved to be a very difficult assignment for his team. An avid reader, Brown says he went outside the scope of basketball and picked up ideas from the famed book “Art of War” by Sun Tzu to gain insight on how to plan against Jackson.

“In order to neutralize an opponent with superior talent, I learned that you have to practice the art of deception,” Brown explained. “So, I came up with a scheme I called ‘The Freak Defense.’ We would start out in a 1-2-2 zone, but when the ball would rotate to the right wing, we would switch to man-to-man. If the ball moved over to the left wing, we would shift to a 2-3 zone, and if the ball moved to the center of the court, we would line up in a 1-3-1 zone. If the opponent caught on to the pattern, we would adjust as the game went along.”

Throughout his years matching wits with some of college basketball’s brightest minds, he says it was his time with the late John Wooden that was the most impactful. A fellow College Basketball Hall of Famer, Wooden is most remembered for his tenure at UCLA from 1948-1975. All told, Wooden coached the Bruins men’s team to a whopping 10 NCAA championships including seven in a row from 1967-1973.

“I think Wooden was the greatest coach and the greatest person I have ever met. He never really talked or preached about the game, he just lived it,” Brown added.

Throughout his time with the Tigers basketball program, Brown helped produce dozens of NBA players with the most famous one being superstar center Shaquille O’Neal. Even after so much success in the college ranks, Brown says he is so thankful for the foundation the city of Minot has provided for him.

“Edgar Guest is my favorite poet. His piece titled ‘The Home-Town’ is exactly how I feel about Minot. The home town is the best town after all.”