BATON ROUGE — Needing a third place finish in the final event of the competition to clinch the national team title, the LSU men’s track and field team came up with just that, claiming their first NCAA Outdoor Championship since 1990.
The foursome of Lueroy Colquhoun, Marlon Greensword, Bennie Brazell and Pete Coley came up with a third place finish in the 4×400-meter relay to secure the team title as the Tigers dethroned defending champion Tennessee.
After it was all added up, LSU wound up with 64 points to claim the fourth NCAA Outdoor Championship in school history, while the Volunteers finished second with 57. SMU was a distant third with 42 points.
In the women’s competition, the Lady Tigers finished fourth, while South Carolina claimed its first national crown.
The Tigers scored 25 points on the final day of competition, taking advantage of each of their scoring chances on the day.
Claston Bernard came up with a gutsy effort in the final competition of his career and became the third LSU man to ever win the NCAA decathlon title, doing so in dramatic fashion. Bernard trailed Ryan Harlan of Rice by 43 points heading into the final event of the competition, but willed himself to a fourth place finish in the 1,500-meter run, not among his strongest events, and bested Harlan by 30 seconds to pull out the win.
Bernard’s total of 8,094 was a personal best and the third highest total in school history.
The 10 points Bernard earned gave the Tigers a five-point lead heading into the final event of the competition.
Earlier in the day, the Tigers got a third place finish from Coley in the 400-meter dash and a sixth place finish by Robert Parham in the 200-meter dash to help set the stage for their remarkable finish.
LSU became the first men’s team to win the event at home since Oregon in 1984 and the first team to win the event at home overall since the Lady Tigers won the 1987 title at Bernie Moore Stadium.
The Lady Tigers came up with a top five finish for the 14th time in the last 16 years behind a host of strong finishes on the day.
Lolo Jones opened the day with a second place finish in the 100-meter hurdles in a time of 13.02, the highest finish in the event since Joyce Bates won the event in 2000.
Muna Lee finished third in the 100-meter dash, then came back to finish fourth in the 200-meter dash, while Stephanie Durst placed seventh in the 100 and third in the 200.
Nicole Toney came up with a fifth place finish in the triple jump to close out the competition.
The national title on the men’s side was the 23rd overall of head coach Pat Henry’s career, the second highest total of any coach in any sport in NCAAhistory. In addition, LSU added to its women’s title from the indoor season and won both a men’s and women’s title in the same year for the third time LSU has accomplished the feat. LSU is still the only school to win both a men’s and women’s track title in the same year.