The California Golden Bears basketball team is the college basketball team of the University of California, Berkeley. The program has seen success throughout the years, culminating in a national championship in 1959 under coach Pete Newell, and the team has reached the final four two other times, in 1946 and 1960. The current head coach is Wyking Jones, who began his tenure at Cal in 2015 as assistant coach before being promoted in 2017.
The team plays its home games at Haas Pavilion, which was long known as Harmon Gym before being heavily renovated with money donated in part by the owners of Levi-Strauss. The arena was originally known as Men's Gymnasium and then later Harmon Gymnasium until the late 1990s when it went through renovations which displaced the team for two seasons.
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History
The Golden Bears first played basketball intercollegiately in 1907 and began full conference play in 1915. The 1920s was the dominant decade for Cal basketball, as the Bears won 6 conference titles under coaches E.H. Wright and Nibs Price. Cal was retroactively recognized as the pre-NCAA Tournament national champion for the 1926-27 season by the Premo-Porretta Power Poll.
Nibs Price would coach Cal with great success for 30 years from 1924 to 1954, earning a 449-294 total record, many single season winning records, and an additional 3 conference titles in the 1930s and 1940s.
Cal reached the pinnacle of the sport during the tenure of Pete Newell, who was head coach from 1955 to 1960. The Golden Bears earned the conference title four out of his five years and in 1959, won the NCAA title. In Newell's last year, Cal came close to another NCAA title, but lost to Ohio State in the final.
The fortunes of Cal men's basketball would never be the same after Newell. The next quarter-century would mostly be a dreary one for the program, despite having players such as Butch Hays (1981-1984) and Kevin Johnson (1983-1987) who would both set school records for assists. From 1960 to 1985, the Bears tallied only two winning seasons in conference play. Lou Campanelli served as head coach from 1986 - 1993. The highlight of this era was a 75-67 victory over UCLA in 1986 that ended a 25-year, 52 game losing streak to the Bruins. Campanelli in his first season took the Golden Bears to the 1986 National Invitation Tournament, the first post season appearance of any sort since 1960. In 1990, Campanelli led the Golden Bears to their first NCAA Tournament in 30 years.
Cal achieved much better success in the 1990s, qualifying for the NCAA tournament five times with future NBA players Jason Kidd (the Golden Bears all-time assists leader) and Lamond Murray, as well as future perennial All-Pro NFL tight end Tony Gonzalez in the early and mid 1990's and Sean Lampley and Shareef Abdur-Rahim in the late 1990s. Cal also won the 1999 National Invitation Tournament, with a thrilling 61-60 victory over Clemson in the title game.
In 2006, the Golden Bears reached their first Pacific Life Pac-10 Men's Basketball Tournament championship game. Power forward Leon Powe grabbed a tournament-record 20 rebounds against USC in the first round and then scored a tournament-record 41 points in a double-overtime victory versus Oregon in the semi-finals. Despite California's 71-52 loss to UCLA in the final game, Powe was named Most Valuable Player for the tournament.
From 1996-2008, under Ben Braun, Cal qualified for the NCAA tournament three straight times in the 2000s and six times overall. However, after finishing near the bottom of the Pac-10 for the second straight year, Braun was dismissed in late March 2008. The former coach of rival Stanford, Mike Montgomery, succeeded Braun. In his first year the Bears finished tied for third in the Pac-10 and made it to the NCAA Tournament, where they were eliminated in the first round to the Maryland Terrapins.
In Montgomery's second season, the Bears won their first conference title in 50 years. The team, featuring four seniors as starters, only lost one game at Haas Pavilion but had a rough non-conference schedule featuring losses to elite teams such as Kansas, Ohio State, and Syracuse, which quickly knocked them out of the national rankings after being ranked #13 in the pre-season. Despite losing the Pac-10 tournament, and questions on whether even the conference champion of a down Pac-10 conference would receive an at-large bid to the tournament, the Bears qualified for their second straight NCAA bid as a #8 seed. They were able to one-up their previous season by winning their first round matchup against the Louisville Cardinals but fell to the eventual national champions, Duke, in the second round. Senior Jerome Randle finished the season and his career as Cal's all-time leading scorer. The highlight of Montgomery's last season as the head coach for Cal was the signature win at home against then undefeated, No. 1 Arizona. In thrilling fashion, senior guard Justin Cobbs hits the game-winning jumper with 0.9 on the clock for a 60-58 victory.
Mike Montgomery announced his retirement shortly after the 2013-14 season's culmination, resulting in the hiring of current Cal's head coach, Cuonzo Martin. The Bears went 18-15 in Martin's first season as head coach.
On April 13, 2015, 5-star power forward Ivan Rabb of Bishop O'Dowd High School announced he would be attending Cal. A little more than 2 weeks later, 5-star small forward Jaylen Brown announced he too would attend Cal, making this recruiting class the best in Cal history. While the team had a solid regular season, earning a #4 seed in the NCAA Tournament, they would be upset in the first round by Hawaii.
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Season-by-season results
*Bozeman was named acting head coach in February 1993 following the firing of Lou Campanelli; California credits the first 17 games of the regular season to Campanelli and the final 13 games (including the NCAA Tournament) to Bozeman.
**Entire 1994-95 season and all but two games of 1995-96 season forfeited by NCAA after it was discovered that Jelani Gardner was ineligible. 1996 NCAA Tournament appearance was vacated. Cal finished 13-14 (5-13 Pac-10) 1994-95, and 17-11 (11-7 Pac-10) in 1995-96.
***California's actual record under Bozeman was is 63-35 (37-26 Pac-10).
Source: 2015-16 Golden Bears Record Book
Coaches
Postseason
NCAA Tournament results
The Golden Bears have appeared in 19 NCAA Tournaments. Their combined record is 20-19. They were national champions in 1959.
NIT results
The Golden Bears have appeared in nine National Invitation Tournaments (NIT). Their combined record is 14-8. They were NIT champions in 1999.
Roster
Record vs. Pac-12 opponents
The California Golden Bears have the following all-time series records vs. Pac-12 opponents. They lead the series vs. all opponents except for Arizona and UCLA. Two series are very close (within a game of being even).
- Note all-time series includes non-conference matchups.
Retired numbers
- 11 Kevin Johnson, G, 1983-87, retired in 1992
- 4 Alfred Grigsby, F, 1991-97, retired in 1997
- 5 Jason Kidd, G, 1992-94, retired in 2004
- 40 Darrall Imhoff, C, 1957-60, retired in 2009
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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