When the Game Was Ours - Larry Bird [29]
"I'm thinking, 'Okay, I'm going to have my way with this guy,'" Magic said.
Johnson was shocked that Nicks didn't draw the assignment. After watching several hours of film on Nicks pressuring guards, he had braced himself for an assault of full-court pressure. With Miley guarding him, he knew that was no longer a worry.
Steve Reed drew first blood for Indiana State with a jumper from the top of the foul circle, thereby negating the "early knockout" punch Magic and Heathcote were seeking.
"But I didn't care about that basket," Johnson said. "It wasn't Larry that took it."
Bird swished a long corner jumper to give Indiana State an 8–7 edge. Although he couldn't have known it at the time, it was the last lead Bird's team would have in the game.
Heathcote angrily called for a time-out even though the game was still in its infancy. "We played the whole season to get here, and we went over the game plan again and again, and you guys are blowing it," Heathcote bellowed. "Now do what I told you! Get in Bird's face!"
Michigan State responded with a 9–1 spurt, and when Heathcote went to a bigger lineup of Kelser, Magic, Brkovich, Vincent, and Charles, the Spartans threatened to blow the game open.
"I knew when they started getting 4-on-1 fast breaks, we had problems," Heaton confessed. "No one had done that to us before."
Michigan State led 30–19 when Magic picked up his third foul angling for an offensive rebound. Johnson sat the final three and a half minutes of the half, but Michigan State still jogged off with a 37–28 advantage at the intermission.
Bird was somber as his team limped to their locker room. Michigan State was doing a masterful job of not only limiting his shots but also sealing off his passing lanes. And every time he tried to put the ball on the floor, two defenders choked off the lane.
"I knew we were in trouble right away," Bird conceded. "Things weren't going right. Their quickness, their defense ... and our guys were tensed up more than any other time we played."
Michigan State's strategy was to work as fervently to prevent Bird from passing as they did to limit his shooting. That left Nicks as ISU's best hope at generating some offense. With Bird struggling, Nicks admitted, he found himself forcing the issue.
"I rushed too many shots," Nicks said. "What scared me to death was Larry couldn't hardly get anything off. He couldn't find a way, and I had never seen that before. I was thinking, 'This is bad.'"
On the other end of the court, Bird also struggled to contain the quicker, more athletic Kelser, who drove on him repeatedly in hopes of exploiting him defensively.
Michigan State was ahead 44–28 and on the verge of breaking the game open when Kelser received the ball on the right side of the key and tried to take Bird to the middle off the dribble. Bird jumped in the passing lane and drew contact. It was a clever maneuver by a player who was at a disadvantage athletically but one step ahead of the play mentally.
Kelser was whistled for his offensive foul, his fourth, which sent him to the bench and provided the Sycamores with one final flicker of hope.
"I'm thinking, 'Oh no, Greg,'" Magic said. "The only chance they had was if one of the two of us were out and we couldn't spread the floor and beat them with our speed."
In the ISU huddle, as Hodges called on his club to pick up the Spartans in a full-court press, Bird implored his teammates, "C'mon, one more run at 'em."
Nicks, Heaton, and Staley each came up with big baskets, but Michigan State's steady Terry Donnelly matched each of them with clutch perimeter jumpers. He would finish the game a perfect 5-of-5 from the floor.
Just as Bird feared, errant free throws hurt Indiana State down the stretch. Bird missed a key free throw after forcing Brkovich into a turnover, and after a Bird fallaway cut the deficit to nine points, Nicks went to the line with a chance to shave it to seven. Instead, he missed both.
The Sycamores would never get closer than