Column:
It was Magic vs. Bird in the Final Four 40 years ago, but do you remember Mark Aguirre and DePaul?
By Phil Rosenthal
Mar 18, 2019 | 8:30 AM
DePaul's Mark Aguirre (32) and Indiana State's Brad Miley lunge for a loose ball during the final minutes of a 1979 NCAA semifinal game in Salt Lake City. (Associated Press)
"I'm not a coach who says winning is everything," observed Ray Meyer, the longtime DePaul coach, trying to remain upbeat after the defeat 40 years ago in Salt Lake City. "Winning is not life itself. There are more important things. Ten years from now, who will remember that we lost this game?"
Actually, save for DePaul die-hards, the Blue Demons' loss to Larry Bird's Indiana State team is about all most people remember about their 1979 Final Four appearance, if they remember it at all.
Like Penn getting routed by Michigan State in the other semifinal that year, DePaul's defeat by the Sycamores has been reduced to a footnote of the championship bout it set up — Bird versus Magic Johnson — two nights later on March 26, 1979.
The Spartans' 75-64 victory over Bird's top-ranked and unbeaten Sycamores heralded a new era in basketball not just for the college game, but for the NBA as well, boosting the popularity of both.
That initial Bird-Magic showdown remains the highest-rated and most-watched title game in NCAA basketball history with more than 35 million viewers.
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So great has the focus been on Magic and Bird — their storied rivalry even spawned a short-lived 2012 Broadway play — that their NCAA showdown has come to feel somehow predestined.
Lost over time is the fact it almost didn't happen.
Forget the buzzer-beater against Arkansas in the Midwest regional final — right-handed Bobby Heaton nailing a left-handed shot — to get Bird and company to the Final Four.
Meyer's Blue Demons should have downed Indiana State and almost did.
"People might think I'm nuts, but I still think we're a better team," Joey Meyer, Ray's son, assistant coach and eventual successor, said after the final horn.
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DePaul had entered the newly expanded 40-team tournament as the No. 8 team in the Associated Press poll but hadn't been ranked at all until two weeks earlier despite reaching the Elite Eight the year before.
For DePaul to reach the Final Four in '79 required tournament victories over USC, Marquette and UCLA, which was ranked No. 2 in the country and was the West's No. 1 seed.
Everyone talked about how Bird didn't have much of a supporting cast with Indiana State, yet it was DePaul that relied heavily on its starting five.
Against the Sycamores, Mark Aguirre, Gary Garland, Curtis Watkins, Clyde Bradshaw and James Mitchem each logged a full 40 minutes, with all but Bradshaw scoring in double figures.
If fatigue was a factor, so too was an early defensive miscalculation not remedied until early in the second half.
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Watkins was assigned to guard Bird despite an injured knee that affected his mobility. The result: Bird hit 12 of 13 shots for 27 of what would be a game-high 35 points until the Blue Demons changed the assignment. After Mitchem took over, Bird was 4 of 6 from the field.
"When I shoot like I did today, I just feel sorry for the other guys," said Bird, who played 39 minutes and had 16 rebounds (only five fewer than DePaul's total), nine assists and a steal
Mitchem was certain he "could have guarded Larry Bird all day and held him down if the people who coach this team had more confidence in me."
Ray Meyer's stated plan, however, was to let Bird get his points and shut the others down.
"But no matter how many times we told our players to watch their own men, they turned their heads on numerous occasions and watched Bird," he said.
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Writing in a "diary" entry the Tribune published the next morning, Meyer said: "There were hundreds of plays in the game and any one of them could have made the difference for us. Any one of them could have made us a winner."
The Blue Demons nevertheless rallied from an 11-point second-half deficit, coming back to take the lead twice late.
Garland — dubbed "The Music Man" because of mother Cissy Houston and aunt Dionne Warwick, if not half-sister Whitney Houston — scored to make it 73-71 at the 4:49 mark, then hit 1 of 2 free throws with 1:37 remaining for a 74-73 advantage.
Both times Indiana State's Heaton answered with baskets. The first, off a Bird pass, tied the game at 73. The second put the Sycamores ahead 75-74 with 36 seconds to play.
Not only was this back when the Final Four was played in an on-campus arena before a crowd of 15,410, rather than an enormo-dome meant for football and five times as many ticket holders, it was before college hoops had a 3-point line.
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There also was no shot clock.
The Blue Demons had begun trying to run down the clock when they got the two-point lead and were still running a four-corner stall down by one.
Garland had good looks but passed. Aguirre, the star freshman, finally put up a shot with just a few seconds left.
The ball bounced high off the rim and out.
A desperation foul sent the Sycamores' Leroy Staley to the line with less than two seconds remaining. He hit the second of two, setting up a Hail Mary court-long pass. Bird came down with the ball and the victory.
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Final score: Indiana State 76, DePaul 74.
"The bubble burst," Meyer said. "We're mortals again."
As the opening act for Magic and Bird two nights later, DePaul beat Penn in overtime in one of the NCAA Tournament's last third-place games. The anticlimactic tradition ended two years later.
There was sincere hope the '79 Final Four loss was going to be the start of something big for the Blue Demons. Instead, they entered each of the next three NCAA Tournaments as a No. 1 seed only to be bounced from the Round of 32 by UCLA, St. Joseph's and Boston College.
The Blue Demons have since advanced to the Sweet 16 three times but no farther. They have made the NCAA Tournament only twice in the last 27 seasons and not at all in the last 15.
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Aguirre went on to become a three-time NBA All-Star. Garland spent a season with the Nuggets. Bradshaw wound up playing overseas. Mitchem became superintendent of the Valley View School District in Romeoville. Watkins died from a blocked artery in 2008 at age 51.
Meyer, who was 92 when he died on St. Patrick's Day in 2006, predicted the loss to Bird eventually would be forgotten.
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"There's no use crying," he said.
What has been forgotten is just how close it was to a victory.
philrosenthal@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @phil_rosenthal
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