Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Long before the Nets, Coach Ray Haskins, here in 1996, and the Long Island University Blackbirds ruled Brooklyn basketball.
Sipping water inside Junior's restaurant on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, about 300 feet from his old home court at what was the Paramount Theatre, Ray Haskins recalled receiving a phone call from an admirer in the winter of 1997.
Haskins was in his third and final season as the men's basketball coach at Long Island University and had just been involved with the biggest mismatch in the history of college basketball.
"Johnnie Cochran called me about that game," Haskins said of the lawyer who defended O. J. Simpson. "He said, 'Coach, what's going on over there at L.I.U.?' I said, 'Mr. Cochran, we're just trying to make a name for ourselves.' He said, 'Keep up the good work.' "
Instead of being a high point in a successful period for L.I.U. basketball, however, the Blackbirds' 117-point victory over Medgar Evers College is a source of regret for many connected to the program.
"I still hate it," said John Suarez, L.I.U.'s athletic director. "I hope someone is as stupid as we are and beats us. It is never going to happen again. I hate it. I hate it that we're in the record book for that."
The final score was 179-62, the largest point differential in N.C.A.A. history.
"To me, it wasn't malicious or mean or anything like that when we played it," Haskins said. "It wasn't premeditated. It was something that just happened."
Long before the Nets and Barclays Center, Haskins and the Blackbirds ruled Brooklyn basketball, if only temporarily. Mired in 10 consecutive nonwinning seasons, L.I.U. promoted Haskins from assistant to head coach in 1995. Recognizing that the program lacked homegrown talent, Haskins brought in two high-profile transfers, Charles Jones and Richie Parker, who, along with Mike Campbell, another talented big man, led L.I.U. to a 21-9 record and an N.C.A.A. tournament berth in 1997.
Haskins, who regularly scheduled games against high-ranked teams, would playfully tell coaches: "Listen, you guys got 12 McDonald's all-Americans. I just want to let you know that our kids eat at McDonald's and we're looking at y'all as a happy meal."
Suddenly, Brooklyn, without a nationally recognized team to call its own for so long, had the Blackbirds. Yet no one could have anticipated the records broken that night of Nov. 26, 1997. The game's statistics remain jarring. L.I.U. made 76 field goals and had 39 steals, both still N.C.A.A. single-game records. Medgar Evers had 60 turnovers.
Medgar Evers Coach Bryan Mariner knew his team was in for a long night from the time the game was scheduled. Mariner understood that a lucrative game deal from the fledgling Division I power to its Division III neighbors made the game difficult to turn down.
"We knew we were going to get punched in the face," Mariner said. "Obviously, I never thought it would be that magnitude."
In the week leading up to the game, Billy Clark and the rest of the Medgar Evers team felt confident they had prepared for the full-court pressure and up-and-down game that was the calling card for L.I.U. Clark, at 5 feet 5 inches, saw shot after shot fall through the net for L.I.U., likening the experience to Ivan Drago's leveling of Apollo Creed into a bloody pulp in "Rocky IV."
"When the first whistle blew, the game was over," Clark said.
L.I.U. led at the half, 81-30, but instead of slowing the game, the Blackbirds added 98 points in the second half. Mariner, usually pacing the sideline, sat still. He remembers the clock felt as if it were moving in slow motion.
The referee Bernard Clinton, a Brooklyn native who was in his first season as a Division I official, looked over at his two colleagues in disbelief, all three staring at the scoreboard in amazement.
"At one point I thought, Do we call this ballgame? But you don't do that," said Clinton, who also refereed games involving teams from the Big East, Atlantic 10 and Atlantic Coast Conferences. "You have to play this game out. In the spirit of the game, even though it was lopsided, both teams were playing the game like it was any other game. They weren't really concerned about the score."
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