NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT : SOUTHEAST REGIONALS : Magical Legend of ’79 Follows Heathcote : Michigan State: Spartans are in the round of 16 again, but everyone wants to talk about a team and player from 11 years ago.

Jud Heathcote has another Michigan State team on the road to the Final Four and another point guard on the road to NBA millions, but wherever he travels, the conversation rewinds to 1979.

Magic.

On the eve of last week’s second-round Southeast Regional encounter with UC Santa Barbara, Heathcote was whisked away again by a reporter’s question.

“Magic did not want to turn pro after his second year,” Heathcote said. “That’s what no one understands. It wasn’t the money. He went out to Los Angeles and met movie stars and Kareem and saw the Forum, and when he came back, everyone said, ‘Aw, he’s starry-eyed.’

“But the reason Earvin turned pro is that the Lakers sat down and told Earvin, ‘As good as you are, you can stay in school and get drafted by Kansas City or whatever, one of the lower clubs, and have a career like Oscar Robertson, where you’re a great player but you don’t win national championships. Here, we have a unique situation where we’re a great team, and this is the first time we’ve had the No. 1 draft choice. We can take you and you can play on a winner.’

“All Magic cared about--and still cares about, as far as basketball goes--is winning. We used to come in and all the other guys used to look at the stats and hand ‘em over to Earvin and he’d just pass ‘em on to the next guy and say, ‘I’ll read about it tomorrow.’ . . .”

Heathcote paused.

“Why are we talking about Earvin?”

For better or for worse, Heathcote has lived 11 years in the shadow of that championship season, forever footnoted as Magic Johnson’s collegiate coach. Never mind that this is Heathcote’s second trip to the NCAA’s round of 16 in the past five years. Never mind the Big Ten championship and the 28-5 record, best in school history.

As soon as Heathcote arrived in New Orleans to prepare for tonight’s Southeast Regional semifinal against Georgia Tech (26-6) at the Superdome, the questions rained like three-point jump shots from Steve Smith, latest keeper of the Spartan flame.

Q: How does this team compare to the 1979 team?

Heathcote: “There’s no comparison. The 1979 team was a unique team; it did things that were ahead of its time. This is a blue-collar team.”

Q: How does Steve Smith compare to Magic Johnson?

Heathcote: “There’s no comparison. Everyone who comes out of the state of Michigan is compared to Magic. Steve Smith is on the threshold of being a superstar, but he’ll never come close to being a Magic Johnson.”

Another question that deserves to be asked: Since when was Heathcote ever obligated to provide an encore? “Citizen Kane” never had a sequel.

But in East Lansing, they keep waiting. The demands can drive a man to play a guard who drinks, as Heathcote did in 1986 with Scott Skiles. Skiles was arrested for drunk driving that season, but Heathcote reinstated him before the playoffs, so long as Skiles remained on good behavior--and good from 20 feet.

Sure enough, Skiles had 31 points in the first round, 23 in the second, and the Spartans took Kansas into overtime before losing in the round of 16.

Most of the time, however, the Michigan State post-Magic era has been embodied in that snippet of videotape a few years back showing Heathcote grabbing a basketball in anger and slamming it to the floor--only to have the ball slam him right back in his face.

After 11-17 and 10-18 seasons, Smith, a 6-foot-6 freshman recruited with Johnson’s help, took the Spartans to the NIT semifinals last year. This year, Smith led them to the Big Ten championship--Michigan State’s first outright title since 1977-78--a surprise to the other nine teams.

“People are still trying to say this team is a group of overachievers,” Heathcote says, “but I say, no, it isn’t. Yes, we’ve overachieved on defense. But on offense, if anything, we’ve underachieved.”

With three-point specialist Kirk Manns in and out of the lineup with a stress fracture in his right foot, Smith (19.7 points a game) is the only regular averaging more than 12 points a game.

Michigan State has relied on a spartan defense, limiting opponents to 43.1% shooting. But Heathcote may be facing his biggest challenge yet in Bobby Cremins’ free-styling Yellow Jackets, who beat LSU, 94-91, to get here.

Georgia Tech has three players averaging at least 20 points--junior forward Dennis Scott (27.6), the Atlantic Coast Conference’s all-time three-point leader; senior guard Brian Oliver (21.6), and freshman guard Kenny Anderson (20.6).

“Dennis Scott is the best ballplayer I’ve seen this year,” Heathcote said. “When you look at the players in our conference who’ll be first-round draft picks, that’s a compliment.”

Heathcote will have to find a way to slow the pace because, as Cremins said: “We play a certain style, and I cannot turn it off now. If we’re missing, we’re missing, but we’re gonna play our game.”

And if Heathcote can’t, the Spartans will go back to East Lansing, and he will go back to being Magic Johnson’s coach.