It was a defeat. But it also was the highlight of Bill Hodges’ career.

Thirty years ago, the championship game of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament captivated the nation. A Michigan State squad headlined by Magic Johnson beat an Indiana State team that starred Larry Bird.

Indiana State’s coach was Hodges, now a William Fleming history teacher and the coach of the Colonels’ girls tennis team.

“Coaches don’t forget games like that,” Hodges said. “You can recall everything nearly that happened.”

The game boosted the popularity of the NCAA tournament, and began a rivalry between Bird and Johnson that delighted NBA fans for years. It remains the highest-rated basketball game in TV history.

“It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Bird said in a phone interview. “They’re still talking about the game 30 years later, and [Hodges] was a major part of that.”

ESPN2 will show the game tonight and Sunday in a retrospective that will include fresh interviews with Johnson and Bird. They will present the game ball Monday at the NCAA final.

CBS was recently in Roanoke to interview Hodges for a feature on the game that will air during its 4 p.m. “Road to the Final Four” show Saturday.
Seth Davis visited Hodges while working on a book about the game that was published last month, “When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball.”

Hodges, 66, is amazed the clash has remained in the public’s consciousness. He did not realize 30 years ago that he would be a part of basketball lore.

“When history’s happening, you don’t notice it,” he said.

New role

In October 1978, four days before the Sycamores began preseason practice, Hodges was named the team’s acting head coach. He had been one of the assistants to Bob King, who had to give up the reins because of a brain aneurysm.

Hodges “did a magnificent job to hold that thing together and get us playing the type of ball that we was capable of playing,” Bird said.

The rookie head coach took over a team that had made the NIT the previous season, when Bird earned All-America honors as a junior.

Bird had a close relationship with Hodges, who had recruited him to the Terre Haute, Ind., school in 1975 after Bird left Indiana University.

“He lived in my house the first summer he was there,” Hodges said. “He lived in a basement apartment — paid $5 a week for rent. That was to keep the NCAA off our back.”

The Sycamores were voted only fourth in the Missouri Valley Conference preseason poll, but they knocked off the Soviet national team in November.
“I knew when we beat them we were going to be good,” Hodges said.

The wins kept mounting in a season that surprised the nation.

“In my mind, I thought we was going to win every game I ever played there,” Bird said. “It’s just that you looked up and we were 18, 19-0. To sit here and say I thought we’d go 33-0 and lose in the final game of the championship, no, we never thought that.”

The acting tag was removed from Hodges’ title in early February. The team rose to No. 1 in the polls and carried a 29-0 record into the 40-team NCAA tournament.

In their first NCAA appearance, the top-seeded Sycamores beat Virginia Tech, Oklahoma and Arkansas to advance to the Final Four in Salt Lake City.

Confident coach

The Sycamores beat DePaul to set up a March 26 showdown with second-seeded Michigan State. The eagerly anticipated final featured the two biggest names in the college game. Both players earned All-America honors that season, but Bird was the consensus national player of the year.

“I knew I was going to have the ball in my hands most of the time,” Bird said of that season. “The most important thing for me was to try and keep the other guys involved in the game and not stand around and watch me.”

Bird averaged 28.6 points and 14.9 rebounds that season.

“After a game he’d always ask how many rebounds he got. He’d never ask how many points he got,” Hodges said.

“There have been people who said he coached the team. That’s not true. He’d just do what you tell him.”

The Spartans not only featured Johnson but also third-team All-American Greg Kelser.

“That was the tough part. Who do you put on Magic? Who do you put on Kelser?” Hodges said. “You’ve got to keep pressure on Magic or he’s going to pass over the top to Kelser. When you put pressure on Magic, he goes around you and gets in the lane.”

Michigan State was the favorite, but Hodges was confident.

“Purdue had beaten Michigan State, and we beat Purdue,” he said. “I thought we would win the game. I really did.”

Hodges had already been named the Associated Press national coach of the year.

“I absolutely loved to play for him,” said Bird, now the president of basketball operations for the Indiana Pacers. “He was tough on us at times, but you know what? That’s part of coaching.”

The game

The NBC telecast drew 35 million viewers and a 24.1 rating, meaning almost 25 percent of the nation’s homes with TV sets tuned in.

But actually, the game itself wasn’t very good. Michigan State won 75-64.

The Spartans extended their lead to 44-28 early in the second half, so the Sycamores switched to an effective pressure defense. Kelser drew his fourth foul and left the game with his team up 48-32, opening the door for an ISU rally. Bird hit a jumper to cut the lead to 52-46 with 10:05 left.

Hodges wishes he had called timeout at that point.

“I’ve often thought if I had called that timeout and [we] had time to rest for a minute and regroup and say, 'OK, now we’re within six, let’s be a little more conservative,’ I think we may have gotten right back in the game,” he said.

Instead, Johnson made a basket and free throw to extend the lead, and the tired Sycamores came no closer.

There was no shot clock to help ISU rally past the Spartans.

“They started holding the ball,” Hodges said. “Today that wouldn’t have happened.”

The Sycamores shot just 42.2 percent from the field against MSU coach Jud Heathcote’s matchup zone defense.

“They were doubling and tripling Larry, and he would throw to our guards and … we just didn’t make the shots,” Hodges said.

Bird snared 13 rebounds but was held to 19 points. He was 7-of-21 from the field.

“We played against the best team we played against all year,” Bird said. “The game plan was fine. If I don’t hit shots, we don’t win. It’s as simple as that.”

Johnson finished with 24 points. Kelser scored 19.

“We’d probably have been better off … packing it in and forcing them to shoot outside,” Hodges said.

'Something to behold’

The loss does not darken Hodges’ memories of the game.

“You’re both winners because hey, you’re the last two standing,” he said.

He said that is the same way he felt at game’s end.

“But if I’d have known then what I know now about life, I might have felt differently,” he said with a laugh. “I could never get back in the daggone tournament.”

Three years later, Hodges was let go by ISU. He would hold only three more collegiate head-coaching jobs — at a Florida junior college, at a Division II college in Georgia, and at Division I Mercer.

This is his third year teaching at William Fleming. He moved to the area because his daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren live in Roanoke. He has a home on Smith Mountain Lake.

Hodges is a regular at Virginia Tech basketball games, and does a little scouting for the Pacers and Philadelphia 76ers.

He uses his basketball past to teach his Fleming students. He usually keeps a team photo of his 1978-79 Sycamores on one of his classroom walls, along with a few of his other team photos, under the sign, “You Live History.”

“When you get to the other end of the road, you look back and you see all the things that happen throughout your lifetime that are historical,” Hodges said. “That’s so evident in the ’79 championship year. It was historical, but we didn’t realize it at the time.

“The other end of my career might not have been as good, but that one year was something to behold.”