61 : Lilly Still Savors the Memory of a Scoring Record That Has Lasted 11 Years

It was, really, just a 15-foot jump shot from the right side of the free throw line, not unlike thousands he had made before.

But in the time it took for the ball to leave his fingertips and swish through the net, Mitchell Lilly’s life changed.

It was Friday night, Jan. 21, 1977, and Madison High School pounded San Diego, 117-80, in an Eastern League boys’ basketball game. It is more remembered as the night Lilly, Madison’s 6-foot, 170-pound guard, set a county scoring record of 61 points.

Today, Lilly, 28, works as a word processor and part-time male stripper in Fremont, Calif. Sometimes he pulls out a videotape of the game. Eleven years later, the excitement returns.

“These kind of things stand out in your mind forever,” Lilly says. “It’s hazier now but still important. I’m still real proud of it, even if it doesn’t do me any good in the real world.”

Although it began as a normal evening in Lilly’s senior year, the record-breaking game was the culmination of something that had been picking up momentum for some time.

The 1976-77 season was supposed to belong to Mitchell and his twin brother, Marshall. The highly publicized twins came to Madison from Kearny High, after three years at Mission Bay High.

Basketball was a way of life, and they planned major college and professional careers. They had transferred to Kearny because they thought there was a better chance that their talents would be discovered by college recruiters. But once there, they made a discovery: There was a guard the coach refused to remove from the starting lineup. So it was on to Madison.

Until the second game, Marshall was considered the better of the two. But when a broken wrist sidelined him for the season, Mitchell began to play as never before. He averaged 38 points per game during Bonita Vista’s Baron-Optimist Christmas tournament, scoring 50 against Torrey Pines. He twice reached the 40s.

“He was like a golfer getting better and better on the tour, and then all of a sudden, boom,” said John Hannon, who coached at Madison from 1962-1986. “We knew the single-game record was 60 (set by Julian’s Bob Petrie in 1969), so I had it in the back of my mind all year. I knew Mitchell’s capabilities. Some coaches would say it’s a distraction, but I don’t think there’s a coach in the county who wouldn’t love to have a kid score 61.”

And so, the day before Madison met San Diego, Hannon began thinking.

“The story starts in practice the day before the game,” Marshall Lilly said. “Coach Hannon walked up to me and said, ‘I think Mitchell can break the record against San Diego tomorrow night.’ I didn’t know for sure which record he was talking about, and I was surprised that he was telling me. I figured I’d be the last one he would have told.”

“I knew San Diego was weak as a team, and I knew they didn’t play very good defense,” Hannon said. “I felt that we were playing San Diego at home, and Mitchell was familiar with the baskets. It wasn’t so much coaching as giving him the freedom to shoot. It was the right team, and he was hot that night.”

Lilly went out and scored 10 points in the first quarter and 13 more in the second. Nothing too unusual, but something was different.

“I felt as good as I’ve ever felt that night,” Lilly said. “I was at the peak of my ability, both physically and psychologically. The rhythm of the game turned into something like a pickup game. It was like playing at the rec center on a Sunday afternoon--dribble down to the end of the court and shoot. But it didn’t seem like I was scoring that many points. They played a man-to-man--no box-and-one--but it was not a tough man-to-man. It was really pretty nonexistent.

“During the last stretch, they would score, our guard would inbound the ball to me, and I’d dribble unmolested to the 20-foot range, make a quick move and fire up a shot. I’ve often wondered why the San Diego coach didn’t try harder to adjust.”

San Diego Coach Earl Hines said, “We started the game with a 2-3 zone, but it wasn’t working, so we went to a man-to-man. I tried putting different people on him, but it didn’t work.”

Lilly scored 18 more in the third quarter, from a variety of places, to give him 41 as the fourth quarter opened.

“I felt a lot of exhilaration because I knew I was having another incredible game,” Lilly said. “But I never thought about the county record until Coach Hannon mentioned it during a timeout about the middle of the fourth quarter.

“Just getting over the 50-point mark was a thrill for me, and then, all of a sudden, they’re saying, ‘You can do it, you can break the record.’ It was Coach Hannon’s decision to have me go for the record.

“I remember I went back into the game and stole the ball right away. I was playing the best basketball I had ever played at that point. My confidence was up, and I was so high psychologically. I drove down after the steal and made a great move, and I felt totally unstoppable . . . like there was nothing I couldn’t do offensively.”

As the fourth quarter progressed, Hannon began calling timeouts to keep Lilly aware of his total.

“I kept telling the kids, ‘Don’t shoot--get the ball to Mitch,’ ” Hannon said. “It started getting really exciting in the fourth quarter.”

As the crowd’s murmur turned into a roar, Hannon was constantly sending people to the scorer’s table to check the scoring.

“I don’t know how many guys I had checking the books,” Hannon said. “Even my manager and JV coach were keeping score. It was exciting--our whole team rallied behind him.”

Carolyn Tucker, the school’s homecoming queen, was the Madison scorekeeper that night. By the end of the season, she would be Mitchell Lilly’s girlfriend and date to the senior prom. They nearly married after 2 1/2 years but eventually broke up. On Jan. 21, the most she knew about Lilly was that she was in the eye of his hurricane.

“I remember counting and re-counting to make sure I was right,” she said. She is now Carolyn Harmon and runs a travel agency franchise business in Carlsbad.

“It’s funny--the pressure was on Mitchell. He was in his glory and couldn’t make a wrong move. But there was a lot of pressure on me, too. Every 5 or 10 minutes, someone new was coming up asking how many points he had.

“The fourth quarter was so exciting, it went by incredibly fast, but I was getting pretty nervous. The coach had people practically guarding the scorer’s table to keep everyone back.

“Toward the end of the game, there were a lot of people standing around the scorer’s table. There was mass confusion--people wanted to see the book.”

His point total reached 59.

“We called a timeout when I got to 59, and they told me, ‘Mitch, you just need one more basket,’ ” Lilly said. “I kept saying, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure?’ Marshall kept reassuring me. I was having a hard time believing it myself.”

When play resumed, Lilly promptly went out and missed three consecutive shots.

“At that point, I was very nervous,” he said. “I wasn’t releasing in my natural way.”

Finally, with about two minutes left, a Madison player missed a shot. As the ball was bouncing out of bounds, backup center Brian Hames grabbed it and fired it back to Lilly at the free-throw line.

“I caught the ball high, and there were two San Diego players there,” Lilly said. “I dribbled twice to my right, pump-faked, and one guy flew over me. I took the shot from the right side of the free throw line, and it went in.”

Lilly says 1 1/2 minutes remained. Hannon remembers that is was more like 2 or 2 1/2.

“I started jumping up and down,” Lilly said. “Instead of handling it in a cool way, back-pedaling and playing defense, everything just kind of stopped. My teammates congratulated me, my brother gave me a big hug, and the next thing I knew, Coach Hannon yanked me. At that point, it didn’t matter, though.”

Said Hannon: “If I had it to do over again, I would have left him in. I’d have left him in and let him get 80. As a record, I think 61 is reachable. Maybe 75 wouldn’t be. But I thought leaving him in would have been pouring it on, and I wanted the fans to give him an ovation.

“The San Diego coach came up to me after the game and said, ‘No problem.’ Some people would have resented it, but he said he probably would have done the same thing.”

Perhaps, but Hines says that by the end of the night, he was boiling.

“You’re dealing with young men, so you try to show sportsmanship,” Hines said. “I was congratulatory toward Mitchell because he was a nice kid. But I just didn’t appreciate that I was the recipient (of the record and lopsided score).

“I was extremely upset. I met with my team in the locker room immediately after the game, and they were mad. I told them to channel their anger in a positive way. We made a pledge then and there to beat Madison the next time we played them (which San Diego did, 67-66, later that year; Lilly scored 27 points).”

At first, Hines wasn’t sure what the commotion was about. But by the fourth quarter, he knew Lilly was going for the record. He can’t remember who told him, and he has one distinct memory from the game: “I kept seeing the ball go up and through the basket,” he said.

Afterward, while fans milled around the scorer’s table and buzzed about what they had just witnessed, Hannon, assistant coach Dan Miller and Tucker retreated to the coaches’ office to recount the points and call area newspapers. Lilly headed for the shower.

“I remember taking the longest shower I ever took,” he said. “I knew it would be a night I would always want to remember, and I was enjoying the hell out of what I had done.”

His brother says some different feelings were going through his mind.

“I was a little bit jealous,” Marshall Lilly said. “We were so competitive. I wasn’t overly jealous and wouldn’t have admitted it at the time. I was like, ‘Oh, great.’ I should have taken my uniform off and become a fan. I had a smile on my face that night, but inside I was thinking, ‘Dammit, how many could I have scored?’

“After the game, there were probably 25 to 30 fans around him, plus my mom and dad. I was watching sad-eyed and jealous.”

Mitchell Lilly averaged 31.9 points that year, first on the all-time season scoring list--ahead of Helix’s Bill Walton, who averaged 29.1. Lilly was named to the All-San Diego Section team and was the San Diego Section player of the year. At the basketball banquet, Madison retired Lilly’s jersey--No. 32 home, No. 33 away. At the senior awards assembly, he received a silver plaque from Sports Illustrated for appearing in the magazine’s Faces in the Crowd section. Hannon presented the SI award, and both he and Lilly say it was one of the highlights of their careers.

“It was perfect, the way he introduced me, and then the whole gym exploded with applause,” Lilly said. “Coach Hannon and I embraced each other. It was the biggest standing ovation I ever received.”

It was also one of the last. Mitchell and Marshall Lilly played basketball for a year at Arizona Western Community College, but neither played at a four-year school. It seemed they were just a step too slow, an inch too short. Eventually, Mitchell earned a degree in journalism from Humboldt State University, worked as a television sportscaster for a while, married (Darci) and had a baby (Jessica). Mitchell and Darci have separated; Jessica is 8 months old.

Lilly says he plays basketball just a couple of times a year now, and he attends some Golden State Warrior games and catches others on television. He says that as he watches, his mind often will wander back to what used to be. He remembers that he’s a county high school record-holder. And he smiles.