Joe Dean Jr., who grew up around college basketball and spent his career in it, has died at age 71.

He came by his love of college basketball quite naturally. He is the son of longtime SEC broadcaster and LSU Athletic Director Joe Dean Sr.  (“…string music”).

Dean Jr. grew up in Baton Rouge and played basketball at Mississippi State in the 1970s. He was an assistant coach at Hail State and at Kentucky, where he assisted the Wildcats to the 1978 NCAA tournament championship.

This wasn’t Dean Jr.’s first brush with death. In 1978, he and his wife, Ellen, survived a plane crash in Tennessee while on a recruiting trip for Kentucky. The pilot did not survive.

Dean became head coach at Birmingham-Southern in 1983, compiling a 137-45 record over six seasons, before moving on to a Division I head coaching job at Central Florida. When his coaching career ended in the early ’90s, he transitioned into marketing in Birmingham.

Dean later returned to Birmingham-Southern as athletics director, a role he held for 17 years. Along the way, he also built a broadcasting career, working as a TV analyst and as radio color analyst for Auburn basketball alongside the legendary Jim Fyffe.

Dean spent nearly two decades calling games on Jefferson Pilot/Raycom and Fox Sports before joining the SEC Network in 2014.

Jim ‘Zig’ Zeigler is a freelance writer about the colorful and positive in Alabama — her people, places, events, groups and prominent deaths. He is a former State Auditor. You can reach him for comments at [email protected].