I had called Billy McGill to ask about playing in the longest, highest-scoring Final Four game ever. He sounded perplexed.
"It doesn't seem like 40 years ago," he said. "Whew! Forty years! What's that? Say 42 years? Wow."
Four decades and more since his University of Utah basketball team made NCAA Tournament history.
"Wow," Billy the Hill repeated.
That's a lot of Final Fours ago.
And four overtimes is a lot of overtimes.
The Cliff's Notes would say McGill was an All-American on the Utah team that lost 127-120 to St. Joseph's in the 1961 NCAA Tournament. Today he works for a government defense company in Los Angeles.
In between, Billy did some living, part of it difficult, some of it sweet. He was drafted No. 1 overall in 1962, playing for teams in Chicago, Baltimore, New York, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Denver, Pittsburgh and Dallas. Those were great times but could have been greater, thanks to his bad knee. These days they'd have fixed him in no time. Back then, he says, doctors merely offered to "put an iron kneecap on me."
No way Billy the Hill signing off on that.
He hurt the knee in high school but never had it fixed. He just played. As the years passed, the pain worsened. In the pros he had it drained before games, 160 cc's at a time. Some days it hurt so much he couldn't jump or run. The injury shortened his pro career to parts of five seasons.
When he felt good there was none better. In college he went for 60 points against BYU. He scored in the 50s three times and the 40s an additional nine times.
But after basketball there were trying times. McGill had many friends when he was playing, not many after. Sometimes he went jobless for months. Once a woman hired him to mop floors but fired him because he couldn't work the equipment correctly. Billy was trying to swab the floors lightly and cleanly. She wanted him to SWING the mop.
He worked 23 years for Hughes Corporation but got laid off in 1995. The Lakers offered him a job cleaning the Forum, but reneged when he was quoted in the paper saying he'd prefer something more rewarding.
Despite the setbacks, says Billy, basketball was good to him. He still follows the Utes. "That's my team," he said.
The feelings surface faster at this time of year, when the NCAA Tournament at high pitch. It reminds him of playing in that record-setting game for third place: four overtimes, 247 points, 204 field goal attempts (95 made) and 128 rebounds between the teams. Those marks still stand as Final Four records. Utah also holds the record for field goals made (50) and is second in points scored in a game (120). The record for points, of course, is the 127 St. Joseph's scored in the same game.
Utah made it that far by beating Loyola Marymount and Arizona State. But it lost to eventual national champion Cincinnati in the semifinals. That set the Utes up in the consolation game with St. Joseph's, a team that went 25-5 that year. The Hawks won on free throws, making a record 37 that day.
St. Joseph's win was eventually "vacated" in the wake of gambling allegations.
Today's Utah teams don't remotely resemble the one that called itself the Runnin' Redskins in McGill's heyday. Utah relies on relentless passing, rebounding and defense. The objective is to keep the tempo under control and get good shots.
That may win games, he says, but it isn't nearly so interesting as a game that features 204 shots.
"I hate to see teams doing that because everyone is so athletic, running and jumping over the basket and all that. A slow-down team very seldom can beat an explosive team," he said.
McGill was lucky enough to play on an explosive team. Even so, he doesn't clearly recall going for 34 points and 14 rebounds in that historic game.
One thing he does remember is being exhausted.
"It was a great feeling," said Billy the Hill, "but then after the first overtime, and then the second, and then the third, I think everyone was just kind of in a fog. I've never been in a game like that."
Want to know the great part? Forty-two years later, neither has anyone else.
E-mail: rock@desnews.com