College hoops boring; 1990 LSU v LMU 148-141 game

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Want a college game with a faster pace? Revisit the LSU-LMU game 25 years ago. Al Toups was so mentally and physically exhausted that all he could do afterward was go home and lay his sore right arm down to rest it. Toups did not play in the game. He was the LSU official scorekeeper. "Had to go home to do finger-ups to limber up," Toups said. "You go almost brain-dead after something like that. You feel almost as exhausted as the players. We earned our money that day."

Debi Polito, who kept the official play-by-play, saw her electric typewriter burn out, prompting officials to scramble for a replacement. The shot clock operator, Toups said, probably had a "hole in his thumb by the end of it."

The memory of that game, which also featured Shaquille O'Neal, echoes through time. Brown recalls that a man from India once approached him in an airport in France and told him it was the best basketball game he'd ever watched. "I'll tell you what I felt like after the game — a sock that got left in the dryer when they left the dryer running," Brown said. "Just boom, boom, boom. I was really fatigued from the game. ... My head was going back and forth, back and forth during the game, and I felt it was like a Chinese Ping Pong match."

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