He didn't specify varsity. Pete played on the Freshman team. He is still by far the best freshman ever to play at LSU.
As much as I love football, hands down, my vote still goes to Pistol Pete... From Pete Maravich - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In his first game on the LSU freshman team Maravich put up 50 points, 14 rebounds, and 11 assists against Southeastern Louisiana College. Maravich played a key role in turning around a lackluster program that had posted a 3–20 record in the season prior to his arrival. Maravich played before the advent of the three-point line. His long-distance shooting skill thus produced far fewer points than would have been the case in a later era. Years later former LSU head basketball coach Dale Brown charted every college game Maravich played, taking into consideration all shots he took. Brown calculated that at the NCAA rule of a three-point line at 19-foot (5.8 m), 9-inches from the rim, Maravich would have averaged thirteen 3-point scores per game, lifting the player's career average to 57 points per game.[
Since I failed to post his stats in my previous post here you go: Laron Landry Started 10 games as a true freshman, where he racked up 80 tackles, 3.5 TFL, 3 sacks, 2 INTs, 4 pass break ups, and 1 blocked kick. Very pivotal player to our '03 national title. He was selected to the Freshman All SEC team, Second Team All SEC, and was First Team Freshman All American. Overall career: 48 straight starts, 315 tackles (7th in school history), 12 INTs (3rd in school history), 3-time All SEC, All American his senior year, 1st round pick to the Redskins.
For me there are three possible choices: Dalton Hilliard, Tom Hodson, Kevin Faulk. Hodson's first season, while outstanding, came as a red-shirt freshman. Hilliard and Faulk are virtually a toss-up. Can't find their freshman season stats, so I'll go with this: Faulk was a five-star recruit and generally considered the top HS senior in the southeast US. He did what was expected of him as a freshman. Hilliard was considered the third-best RB of his recruiting class. By the season opener, he had surpassed Karl Bernard and was sharing carries with Garry James. By the third game he was the clear-cut starter. Hilliard wins.
Junior Varsity. 1972 was the first year that freshmen could play on the varsity team but none did that I remember, maybe Mike Williams. LSU had two senior quarterbacks including All-American Bert Jones and were not about to burn a redshirt to play Miley.
