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Former Tiger Great Roger Sigler Dies

by LSUsports.net (@LSUsports)
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Former Tiger Great Roger Sigler Dies

BATON ROUGE — Former LSU basketball and baseball star Roger Sigler passed away Sunday at the age of 70 after a lengthy battle with lung cancer.

Sigler played three years for the LSU varsity basketball team under coach Harry Rabenhorst beginning with the 1954-55 season. Sigler averaged 15.0 points his sophomore year, a strong 25.1 points per game in 20 games his junior season and 18.4 points per game in his season, 1957.

He finished his career with 1,318 points, a 19.1 average and at the time, it was the second highest scoring total in school history, only behind Bob Pettit’s 1,916 points. Today, Sigler still is one of the only 34 players in LSU history to score 1,000 career points and he ranks 20th on the all-time list.

Sigler is also one of only a handful of LSU players to have scored 1,000 career points and pulled down 500 rebounds. Sigler averaged 10.3 rebounds during his career, highlighted by a 13.8 average his junior season of 1956. He ranks 17th all-time on the school rebounding chart.

Sigler was named first-team All-SEC in 1956 and third-team All-SEC in 1957 and in 2000 was inducted into the Louisiana Association of Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame.

In baseball, Sigler was best known for a school record that stood for nearly 40 years. In 1954, Sigler had a school best eight triples in 59 at bats. It was Todd Walker in 1993 in 276 at bats who broke the mark with 11 total triples in a single season.

Sigler was also an outstanding high school athlete in the state of Ohio, where he was born in 1935. At Taylor High in North Bend, Ohio, he excelled in football, basketball and baseball, earning All-State honors in each. He still holds the all-time Cincinnati record of six consecutive shutouts in prep baseball and was a member of an American Legion national championship team in 1952. He was inducted into Buddy LaRosa’s Sports High School Hall of Fame (1987) as well as the Taylor High School Hall of Fame in 2000.

Sigler is survived by his wife of 47 years, Rosalind Smith Sigler; son, Mark Sigler and his wife Jennifer Sigler of Baton Rouge; daughter, Melissa Sigler Cooper and her husband, Arthur Cooper of Prairieville and a sister, Molly Sigler Morgan of California.

Visitation will be from 5 p.m. Wednesday at University United Methodist Church until the religious service that will begin at 7 p.m., conducted by the Rev. Dr. J. Phillip Woodland.