http://www.amazon.com/Pistol-Life-Maravich-Mark-Kriegel/dp/0743284976
He was a great showman but a lousy, indifferent student. The plan was that he would play for his father at N.C. State, but the Atlantic Coast Conference required a minimum SAT score of 800, and Pete couldn't hit even that. So eventually Press was hired by Louisiana State University, and Pete came along as part of the deal. If LSU is now a basketball power, the Maraviches get all the credit -- or the blame. Pete was the hottest thing to hit Baton Rouge since Huey Long. In three years there, he set a national collegiate scoring record of 44.2 points per game, a record that may well never be broken. But he wasn't just a scoring machine; he was a one-man show, with his hair flopping all over the place and his sagging socks and his incredible moves: passing between his legs, behind his back, hitting shots from half-court without looking at the basket -- he was a one-man Harlem Globetrotters, except that he was white.
He was a great player, but his teams ranged from slightly better than average to mediocre. LSU never went to the NCAA tournament in his three years there, and the one year it got into the consolation prize, the National Invitational Tournament in New York, Pete laid an egg. LSU was wasted by Marquette, 101-79, and he scored only 20 points, less than half his average. John Wooden, the great coach at UCLA and one of Press's best friends in basketball, said that Pete would make a million dollars in the pros, "but he'll never win a championship."
