BATON ROUGE – Former LSU Basketball player Sam Chase has been named to the 2019 men’s induction class for the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame it was announced this week by the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame Board of Directors.
Chase, who lettered at LSU from 1961-64, starred in small town Indiana before coming to Baton Rouge. He was coached at LSU by another Indiana Hall of Famer, the late Jay McCreary.
Chase took small school success in a historic gym to college success at a major program. A 1960 graduate of Knightstown High School in Knightstown, Indiana (which today has a population just over 2,000), Chase was a sophomore for the Panthers’ 1958 sectional championship, the first in school history.
Averaging 15.7 points as a junior and 24.8 points as a senior, he totaled 1,178 career points before graduating at 16 years old as a two-time East Central Conference Player of the Year and the all-time leading scorer in the Knightstown facility that would come to be known as the “Hoosier Gym”, then the home court of Knightstown High School.
His success at LSU included averaging 21.8 points per game to lead the Baby Bengals freshman team as the youngest member of the squad, a freshman team average that would only be surpassed later by Pete Maravich).
He had multiple 20-plus point games, including 25 in his sophomore year against Texas, averaging 5.6 points and 2.0 assists as a sophomore, 8.4 points and 3.3 assists as a junior and 14.2 points as a senior in 1964 when he made 45.3 percent of his shots and 122-of-148 (82.4%) at the free throw line. He had six 20-plus point games in 1963-64 including 24 versus SMU, 21 against Texas and a career high of 27 twice against Iowa and Auburn.
The 6-0 guard, who was a two-time team captain earned honorable mention All-SEC honors.
Chase has had over 50 years of success in investment management and corporate finance, currently as founder and managing partner of Tanglewood Capital Partners. He presently resides in Houston, Texas.
The induction is set for March 20, 2019.