Forty years ago, LSU's NCAA tourney game vs. Michigan State was "Magical"

In a bittersweet moment for the Tigers’ junior guard from New Orleans, his 25 points in 28 minutes was the lone bright spot in LSU’s 1979 NCAA Mideast Regional semifinal loss to Michigan State.

The Tigers, playing in their first NCAA tourney for the first time in 25 years, never had a chance. Led by charismatic 6-9 guard Earvin “Magic” Johnson, the eventual national champions comfortably handled LSU 87-71.

The Spartans and Tigers haven’t crossed paths since, but they’ll meet Friday night in an East Region semifinal in Washington, D.C.

Just like in ’79, Michigan State is the Big 10 regular season champion and a No. 2 seed, and LSU is the SEC regular title holder and the No. 3 seed.

LSU, like rest of college basketball in ’79, had no one who could match-up with future Naismith Hall of Famer Johnson. He dissected Tigers with 24 points (including 14-of-15 free throws) and 12 assists, but he certainly took note of Hultberg’s day afterward.

“I shake hands with Magic after the game, I say `Good game’ and he won’t let my hand go,” Hultberg recalled. “He said, `Man, you the best shooting white boy I’ve ever seen!’ I laughed and said `Good luck the rest of the way.’”

The Spartans had five players on that ’79 team who were eventually NBA draft choices. Three of them (Johnson, Greg Kelser, Jay Vincent) played for six or more seasons highlighted by Johnson’s 12½ years with the Los Angeles Lakers. It's where he won five NBA titles and was named the NBA MVP and Finals MVP three times each.

“Michigan State was so long and tall, and they played a zone defense that covered the whole court,” Hultberg said. “It was hard to find angles to get shots. They just came out of the gate and blitzed us so quickly it was hard to recover.

“They were just so good, Magic was pretty special. We’d never seen anything quite like him. He just controlled the pace, the flow, he controlled everything.”

Admittedly, LSU went into the NCAA tourney shorthanded.

The Tigers, who had won their first SEC title since 1954, did so without the services of junior forward Durand “Rudy’ Macklin.

Macklin, who would eventually become LSU’s second all-time leading scorer and all-time leading rebounder, broke his foot in practice after averaging 23 points in the Tigers’ first two games of the season. He was eventually redshirted.

LSU survived his absence because of the unexpected accelerated development of 6-8 junior forward DeWayne “Astronaut” Scales, nicknamed for his high-flying vicious dunks.

But in LSU’s first and only game of the SEC tournament, a loss to Kentucky after the Tigers swept the Wildcats in the regular season, Scales suddenly began playing completely out of character.

“We started noticing that every time he rebounded, rather than passing the ball to (starting point guard) Ethan Martin or myself to start a fast break like we’d done all year long,” Hultberg said, “he would dribble the ball upcourt. We realized somebody had gotten in his head. That day, he decided he was going to dribble.”

Said Brown, “I suspected something was wrong when DeWayne didn’t take his first six open shots against Kentucky’s zone. We’d beaten that zone easily before.”

Apparently, Scales’ high school coach told him if he wanted to attract pro scouts that he needed show more of his overall game, such as ballhandling.

Then, Brown found Houston sports agent Andrew Benson in Scales’ room at the SEC tournament in Birmingham. Benson had urged Scales to implement changes in his game as Scales’ high school coach suggested.

Brown, calling it at time “the most difficult decision I’ve ever made in 23 years of coaching,” suspended Scales for the NCAA tournament.

Without Scales and his 19.3 points and 9.1 rebounds, LSU was able to beat Appalachian State 71-56 in the Tigers’ opening game. But Michigan State was entirely different animal because of you-know-who.

“Nobody before had ever seen (LSU’s) `Pistol Pete’ Maravich do the things he did,” said Hultberg of Maravich, college basketball’s all-time leading scorer who dazzled opponents and fans from 1967-70 with seldom-seen ball-handling wizardry and flair. “Nobody before had seen a guy as big as Magic handle the ball, bring the ball upcourt and do the things he did.”

It wasn’t a fair fight for Tigers. Kelser converted two steals into dunks in the first few minutes and Michigan State was off and running.

The ringleader was Johnson.

In the first half when LSU opened in a 2-1-2 zone defense, Johnson played center in the middle of the zone. In the second half when the Tigers switched to a man-to-man, Johnson was guarded mostly 6-2 Al Green, a feisty transfer from North Carolina State with a 40-inch vertical and also 6-7 walk-on Ernest Brown.

Finally in the game’s last 10 minutes when LSU was frantically trying to push the pace, Johnson was at his full-blown best. He countered the Tigers by leading fast break after fast break and throwing a series of brilliant passes.

“Magic was that guy who could rebound it himself and push it down the floor,” Hultberg said. “They were getting fastbreaks left and right. We’d never seen anything like that.

“We couldn’t simulate Magic in practice in any shape or form. You just have to go out and play. And when you get on the court against him, he’s just so big and so wide and so tall, you knew you weren’t going to take the ball from him.

“What hurt us was his ability to see over us. His teammates just kept cutting and cutting, Magic found them, and they made shots. We called timeouts. We tried changing defenses. We went man. We went zone. We tried everything in the book."

Despite missing his first four shots, Hultberg heated his sweet lefty shooting stroke. Late in the first half, he swished three straight catch-and-shoot jumpers.

“The rim looked pretty big that day,” said Hultberg, who hit 11-of-20 field goals. “I figured if they would have had a 3-point line (which college basketball adopted in 1986), I would have had 8 3’s.

“We were working against that zone. I told Ethan, `I’m going to move around and you find me. I’m going to shoot it and you might get some assists today.’ Ethan did a good job of finding me. We were behind, so there was no sense in deliberating. If you’ve got a good shot, just take it and see what we can do.”

The Tigers trailed 36-19 at halftime. Even LSU outscoring Michigan State 52-51 in the second half couldn’t dent the final outcome.

“You’ve got to play really well against them, because every mistake you made they would take it and run it down your throat," Hultberg said. "That big 6-9 beast combined ballhandling and passing skills with a basketball I.Q. that was off the charts. He always made the right play.”

Hultberg, who now has a daily afternoon sports talk show in Lafayette on 103.7 FM, has never forgotten that game and apparently neither has Johnson.

After Hultberg's coaching career as an LSU assistant when he became a TV sideline reporter for the then-New Orleans Hornets, he was with the team on a road trip in Los Angeles. It was then that former Lakers guard and Hornets coach Byron Scott held a 50th birthday party for his wife at the Ritz Carlton Marina Del Ray.

Scott invited Hultberg to the party. So, when Hultberg walked in, he spied Magic and wife Cookie. Hultberg was intrigued if Magic remembered him, so he approached the basketball icon.

“Earvin, I don’t want to bother you, but we played against one another back in the day,” Hultberg said.

“Who did you play for?” Magic asked.

“LSU,” Hultberg replied.

“Jordy, No. 20,” Magic said with hesitating. “You had about 20 or 30 points against us.”

“Yeah, that’s right and thank you for remembering,” Hultberg said. “And thanks for kicking our butt like you did.”

“We were pretty good, we weren’t worried too much about you guys,” Magic said flashing his unmistakable trademark smile.

The loss to Michigan State marked the first of three straight years that LSU got eliminated from the NCAA tourney by the eventual national champion. Louisville knocked the Tigers out in the 1980 tourney with an 86-66 win in the Midwest finals when Hultberg made an LSU NCAA tourney record 8-of-10 shots in the final game of his college career. Then, Indiana beat LSU 67-49 in the 1981 Final Four semifinals.

Hultberg can’t help wondering how the Tigers would have fared against Magic and company if the Tigers would have had Macklin and Scales available.

“That was the most talented 1 through 10 team Coach Brown ever had,” Hultberg said. “Practices were ridiculous of how competitive and how good they were. We had size, we had length, we had quickness.

“But for that (Michigan State) game, we were missing two important cogs. We still thought we had a chance to win until the first five minutes against them. Then it was boom, boom, boom! It was like we were in the ring with Mike Tyson.

“All of a sudden, Market Square Arena was closer to East Lansing, Michigan than Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The crowd got into it. Magic’s eyes got as big as saucers. He had the big smile working and I said, `Oh man, we are in big trouble.’

“We just ran into the wrong team at the wrong time. They were special. You don’t mind losing to a great team that has great players that play great on that day.”