COVINGTON, La. — Former Louisiana State University basketball player Josh Maravich, son of the late basketball Hall of Famer Pete Maravich, has died at the age of 42, the university announced Saturday night.
He died at his home on Friday, according to a statement from LSU. The cause of death was not released.
Josh Maravich played as a reserve player for LSU under then-head coach John Brady from 2001-02 through the 2004-05 season, when the school played its home games at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
It was a childhood dream for Maravich’s son to play at Louisiana State, where his father set the men’s NCAA Division I scoring record with 3,667 points from 1967-70.
“I wanted to come here to make my dad proud,” Josh Maravich said in a 2005 article in LSU’s student newspaper, The Daily Reveille. “I knew I wouldn’t be a star player, but for me, being a walk-on player was what I always wanted to do.”
Mark Maravich’s “The Life of Pete Maravich”
Kriegel Simon & Schuster via Bloomberg News.
Pete Maravich was a prolific scorer in the NBA, but his career was cut short in 1980 due to a serious knee injury he suffered a few years earlier.
In 1988, at age 40, he died from an undetected heart condition.
He made headlines again earlier this year when his Division I scoring record, which had remained untouched by any player, male or female, for more than half a century, was broken by Iowa star Caitlin Clark (3,951 points).
When Louisiana State University unveiled a bronze statue of Pete Maravich outside its basketball facility in 2022, sculptor Brian Hanlon said the idea to depict their father, known for his showmanship and creativity, making passes from behind came from Josh Maravich and his brother, Jason Maravich.
