Over his three year career, Mike Laska was a dependable, defensive minded guard for the Georgetown teams of the late 1960's. Yet he will be long remembered for one afternoon in march, 1970 when his play was as the talk of the college basketball world.

The name of Laska was a familiar one in Worcester, MA. Mike was the oldest of five children of Andy Laska, who played alongside Bob Cousy on Holy Cross' 1947 NCAA championship team and coached for 11 seasons as the head coach at Assumption College twice having been named New England Coach Of the Year. The younger Laska starred at Assumption's prep school but chose Georgetown over Holy Cross, averaging 25.5 points as a freshman.

A foot injury his sophomore limited his efforts for much of his next two seasons, holding him to 5.1 points a game as a sophomore and just over six points as a junior. A starter as a senior, Laska averaged 7.2 ppg on 37 percent shooting but was a standout on defense, a skill which prepared him for the game of his life in the 1970 NIT.

That Georgetown even got to the NIT is a story all its own. The team needed a waiver from the ECAC to declare its game versus Jacksonville a no-contest rather than a loss, and a late season setback to Manhattan at Madison Square Garden could have sunk the Hoyas' chances much as it did in 1966. But on the last week of the regular season, Georgetown upset Penn State and St. Peter's routed Manhattan, and the NIT committee (which included Andy Laska) selected Georgetown over Manhattan, giving the Hoyas its first post-season appearance in 17 years.

Georgetown's opponent was Louisiana State, whose 6-5 senior Pete Maravich was the talk of college basketball. In an era when only the only national television coverage of college basketball was reserved for the championship game, CBS took the unusual step of bringing its cameras to a first round game at Madison Square Garden, where NFL announcers Jack Whitaker and Pat Summerall introduced the nation to Pistol Pete...and Mike Laska.

Few had seen ever LSU on television. Maravich averaged 44 points a game in his college career and twice set the single game record, a 69 point game versus Alabama. Against #1 Kentucky, he finished with 51. Against the five time NCAA champions at UCLA, a mere 38. With Maravich owning a six inch height advantage over his first round defender, the broadcasters foretold a rout. It was anything but. Laska held Maravich to a career low one field goal at the half and he finished with just six field goals and 20 points overall, a few points of his all-time low. Though two Maravich free throws proved the margin of victory in LSU's 83-82 win, it was Laska's defense that kept Georgetown there to the end.

"The refs told me that they were going to call the game close and after the first foul, I knew I could play my game," Laska told the HOYA in post-game comments. "There were a couple of times when he hesitated his shots. I held him to five points in the first half and I got confidence, which was important since half of playing defense is in the head. I knew I wasn't that outclassed."

The game was Laska's final game as a senior. Following Georgetown, he earned a law degree at Catholic University and served with the Federal Highway Administration for a number of years before pursuing private practice.