University of Louisiana at Lafayette Athletics
Louisiana UnLimited – Dad Dion was a Prophet for Cajuns' Basketball Team
3/15/2023 4:05:00 PM | Men's Basketball, Louisiana UnLimited
Dion Brown was a very, very good basketball player during his four-year career with then-USL's Ragin' Cajuns from 1980-84.
He's also good at passing down a gene pool of athletic ability, knowledge of the game he loved, and fatherly guidance, since his son Jordan is one of the nation's elite players and the leader of Sun Belt Conference tournament champion UL's squad entering Thursday's first round of the NCAA Tournament.
And, apparently, he's a prophet.
The elder Brown, who now lives with wife Yolanda in California, was in Acadiana in December to attend Jordan's graduation. At that December ceremony, inside the Cajundome where the 6-foot-11 Jordan has done many memorable things over the past two years, he stood out as undoubtedly the tallest among the 1,214 graduates.
At the time, Dion predicted great things for this year's edition of the Cajuns … something similar to what he experienced during the final three years of his collegiate career.
"I told my son that we're going to be there for the conference tournament in Pensacola, and then we're going to follow them to the NCAA Tournament," the elder Brown said during that December trip. "I believe in this team, and I know what Jordan can do."
There were shreds of doubt not long after that graduation exercise, when UL lost three straight road games. But, Dion's projections wound up just as spot-on as the stellar shooting touch he showed as a 6-foot-7 forward out of Birmingham, Ala. In his last three seasons, the older Brown shot 55.6 percent, 59.5 percent and 56.1 percent from the field for three teams that made NCAA or NIT Tournament fields.
So there they were in the Pensacola Bay Center last week, watching Jordan and his UL teammates post three wins on the way to the Sun Belt tournament championship and confirming their preseason top ranking by the league coaches.
UL beat Georgia Southern 67-49, Texas State 64-58 and South Alabama 71-66, and Jordan's line was impressive in each game – 16 points and 13 rebounds against Georgia Southern, 18 points and six boards against Texas State while hitting 8-of-14 shots, and 13 points and 16 rebounds in the finals despite most of South Alabama's student body sagging in low to defend him. He was an easy choice for tournament MVP.
Now the younger Brown gets to potentially one-up the old man, with the Cajuns bound for a Thursday night first-round contest in Orlando against Tennessee. The Volunteers ended the Cajuns' 24-8 season in 1982, defeating then-USL in a tight 61-57 Mideast Regional game in Indianapolis in a battle of the Nos. 8 (UL) and 9 (UT) seeds. That was the Cajuns' first NCAA tourney trip since the Bo Lamar-glory days of the early 70's.
"If we had a shot clock like in today's rules, I really believe we would have won that game by 10," Dion told The Advocate's Kevin Foote at the conference tournament. "At about the 15-minute mark, they froze the ball and just shot free throws. I felt like I had a pretty good matchup with Dale Ellis. It just didn't work out."
Fortunately for the elder Brown, his teams had two more national-tournament experiences. The Cajuns, who moved to the independent ranks after the 1981-82 season to preserve their I-A status (the Southland Conference went the I-AA route), were selected to the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team the following year after going 22-7 under coach Bobby Paschal, but fell to Rutgers 60-53 in the East Regional in Hartford, Conn. "We had no business losing that game," said Dion, who insists to this day that was his most disappointing moment as a player.
One year later, UL was invited to the NIT and posted three straight wins, the last two at a rowdy Blackham Coliseum, to earn a trip to New York and the NIT Final Four.
Dion's career also included a stunning championship at the Great Alaska Shootout where UL defeated preseason No. 1 and Patrick Ewing-led Georgetown, topped Washington State by a double-digit margin and crunched Marquette 81-64 in the title game. Two years later in what was then a prestigious Sugar Bowl Tournament, Brown was the MVP in the event after the Cajuns beat Florida and Kansas by nine points each.
Brown finished his career as the Cajuns' No. 2 all-time rebounder (now third) with 926 despite being undersized against many of his opponents. He was also 13th in all-time scoring at the time (now 19th) with 1,412 points despite playing on a balanced team that included memorable Cajuns Graylin Warner, Alonza Allen, Dan Gay, Johnny Collins and George Almones and Cedric Hill.
Those numbers also put the Brown family into one of college basketball's most exclusive clubs. Research by UL staffers and CBS have uncovered only eight father-son duos in Division I history who have both tallied 1,000 points and 500 rebounds. That list includes some well-known names – Bill and Luke Walton, Scott and Sean May, Ron Harper Sr. and Jr., Ralph and Ralph III Sampson, Dale and Trayce Jackson-Davis and Cedric Henderson Sr. and Jr.
And, the only other duo to reach those milestones at the same school are Jimmy and Jalen Moore at Utah State.
Jordan originally signed with Nevada after being a five-star McDonald's All-American and averaging 23.5 points and 13.1 rebounds at aptly-named Prolific Prep in Napa, California. Both Browns came on a recruiting visit to Lafayette, but the elder Brown wasn't going to push his son even after his memorable Cajun career.
He later transferred to Arizona and was the Pac 12 Conference's Sixth Man of the Year, but a change in that program led him looking again and eventually signing with UL – in part because of the relationship he developed with UL coach Bob Marlin during his first recruitment.
"As a parent, you reach a point where being in the highest-rated conference isn't as important as your kid just being happy," Dion said. "I really enjoyed my college career and I wanted Jordan to really enjoy his as well.
"It was nice being in a situation where we could trust the coach. We had a good relationship with the coaches (at Nevada and Arizona), but it's just different with coach Marlin."
UL made a post-season run to the Sun Belt finals last year in Jordan's first season and took that next step last week in Pensacola while Jordan's parents looked on – and sweated it out when the Cajuns fell behind South Alabama by seven points in the game's first five minutes. UL still trailed by seven in the first minute of the second half before going on a 21-8 run that built a six-point lead.
The Cajuns never trailed after that, but it was a one-point game with 28 seconds left when Jalen Dalcourt hit a huge jumper in the lane for a 67-64 lead. Four icing free throws later, and UL was making its first NCAA trip in nine seasons.
"My emotions were everywhere," he told Foote after the tournament finals. "My wife said I went through all four stages during the game. At first things didn't look good. We were very worried and very nervous. But I remember Dalcourt hitting a big shot and I was like, 'OK, we got this. We can do this.'"
He's also good at passing down a gene pool of athletic ability, knowledge of the game he loved, and fatherly guidance, since his son Jordan is one of the nation's elite players and the leader of Sun Belt Conference tournament champion UL's squad entering Thursday's first round of the NCAA Tournament.
And, apparently, he's a prophet.
The elder Brown, who now lives with wife Yolanda in California, was in Acadiana in December to attend Jordan's graduation. At that December ceremony, inside the Cajundome where the 6-foot-11 Jordan has done many memorable things over the past two years, he stood out as undoubtedly the tallest among the 1,214 graduates.
At the time, Dion predicted great things for this year's edition of the Cajuns … something similar to what he experienced during the final three years of his collegiate career.
"I told my son that we're going to be there for the conference tournament in Pensacola, and then we're going to follow them to the NCAA Tournament," the elder Brown said during that December trip. "I believe in this team, and I know what Jordan can do."
There were shreds of doubt not long after that graduation exercise, when UL lost three straight road games. But, Dion's projections wound up just as spot-on as the stellar shooting touch he showed as a 6-foot-7 forward out of Birmingham, Ala. In his last three seasons, the older Brown shot 55.6 percent, 59.5 percent and 56.1 percent from the field for three teams that made NCAA or NIT Tournament fields.
So there they were in the Pensacola Bay Center last week, watching Jordan and his UL teammates post three wins on the way to the Sun Belt tournament championship and confirming their preseason top ranking by the league coaches.
UL beat Georgia Southern 67-49, Texas State 64-58 and South Alabama 71-66, and Jordan's line was impressive in each game – 16 points and 13 rebounds against Georgia Southern, 18 points and six boards against Texas State while hitting 8-of-14 shots, and 13 points and 16 rebounds in the finals despite most of South Alabama's student body sagging in low to defend him. He was an easy choice for tournament MVP.
Now the younger Brown gets to potentially one-up the old man, with the Cajuns bound for a Thursday night first-round contest in Orlando against Tennessee. The Volunteers ended the Cajuns' 24-8 season in 1982, defeating then-USL in a tight 61-57 Mideast Regional game in Indianapolis in a battle of the Nos. 8 (UL) and 9 (UT) seeds. That was the Cajuns' first NCAA tourney trip since the Bo Lamar-glory days of the early 70's.
"If we had a shot clock like in today's rules, I really believe we would have won that game by 10," Dion told The Advocate's Kevin Foote at the conference tournament. "At about the 15-minute mark, they froze the ball and just shot free throws. I felt like I had a pretty good matchup with Dale Ellis. It just didn't work out."
Fortunately for the elder Brown, his teams had two more national-tournament experiences. The Cajuns, who moved to the independent ranks after the 1981-82 season to preserve their I-A status (the Southland Conference went the I-AA route), were selected to the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team the following year after going 22-7 under coach Bobby Paschal, but fell to Rutgers 60-53 in the East Regional in Hartford, Conn. "We had no business losing that game," said Dion, who insists to this day that was his most disappointing moment as a player.
One year later, UL was invited to the NIT and posted three straight wins, the last two at a rowdy Blackham Coliseum, to earn a trip to New York and the NIT Final Four.
Dion's career also included a stunning championship at the Great Alaska Shootout where UL defeated preseason No. 1 and Patrick Ewing-led Georgetown, topped Washington State by a double-digit margin and crunched Marquette 81-64 in the title game. Two years later in what was then a prestigious Sugar Bowl Tournament, Brown was the MVP in the event after the Cajuns beat Florida and Kansas by nine points each.
Brown finished his career as the Cajuns' No. 2 all-time rebounder (now third) with 926 despite being undersized against many of his opponents. He was also 13th in all-time scoring at the time (now 19th) with 1,412 points despite playing on a balanced team that included memorable Cajuns Graylin Warner, Alonza Allen, Dan Gay, Johnny Collins and George Almones and Cedric Hill.
Those numbers also put the Brown family into one of college basketball's most exclusive clubs. Research by UL staffers and CBS have uncovered only eight father-son duos in Division I history who have both tallied 1,000 points and 500 rebounds. That list includes some well-known names – Bill and Luke Walton, Scott and Sean May, Ron Harper Sr. and Jr., Ralph and Ralph III Sampson, Dale and Trayce Jackson-Davis and Cedric Henderson Sr. and Jr.
And, the only other duo to reach those milestones at the same school are Jimmy and Jalen Moore at Utah State.
Jordan originally signed with Nevada after being a five-star McDonald's All-American and averaging 23.5 points and 13.1 rebounds at aptly-named Prolific Prep in Napa, California. Both Browns came on a recruiting visit to Lafayette, but the elder Brown wasn't going to push his son even after his memorable Cajun career.
He later transferred to Arizona and was the Pac 12 Conference's Sixth Man of the Year, but a change in that program led him looking again and eventually signing with UL – in part because of the relationship he developed with UL coach Bob Marlin during his first recruitment.
"As a parent, you reach a point where being in the highest-rated conference isn't as important as your kid just being happy," Dion said. "I really enjoyed my college career and I wanted Jordan to really enjoy his as well.
"It was nice being in a situation where we could trust the coach. We had a good relationship with the coaches (at Nevada and Arizona), but it's just different with coach Marlin."
UL made a post-season run to the Sun Belt finals last year in Jordan's first season and took that next step last week in Pensacola while Jordan's parents looked on – and sweated it out when the Cajuns fell behind South Alabama by seven points in the game's first five minutes. UL still trailed by seven in the first minute of the second half before going on a 21-8 run that built a six-point lead.
The Cajuns never trailed after that, but it was a one-point game with 28 seconds left when Jalen Dalcourt hit a huge jumper in the lane for a 67-64 lead. Four icing free throws later, and UL was making its first NCAA trip in nine seasons.
"My emotions were everywhere," he told Foote after the tournament finals. "My wife said I went through all four stages during the game. At first things didn't look good. We were very worried and very nervous. But I remember Dalcourt hitting a big shot and I was like, 'OK, we got this. We can do this.'"
Players Mentioned
G
/ Men's BasketballInside Louisiana Athletics Recap for Oct 8, 2025 to Oct 14, 2025
Tuesday, October 14
Michael Desormeaux Media Availbility (Oct 13, 2025)
Monday, October 13
Kristi Gray Media Availability (Oct 13, 2025)
Monday, October 13
Chris McBride Media Avialbility (Oct 13, 2025)
Monday, October 13
