Bitter Days at Cal Now Sweet

Randy Duck sat in the locker room last Saturday with his left leg propped on a plastic chair, a party-size bag of ice waging cold war against his swollen left foot.

Duck’s ankle has been bloated for weeks, sprained most recently and severely in California’s first-round NCAA victory over Princeton.

Two days later, Duck ordered the ankle gauzed and taped and made two, game-turning three-point shots in the Golden Bears’ second-round victory over Villanova.

“How bad was the ankle?” a reporter asked the senior guard afterward.

“No one knows but me,” Duck said. “I played 31 minutes of hard basketball.”

“How much did it affect you?”

“None,” Duck said.

Given what the program has overcome in the last year, the chances of Duck missing Cal’s joy ride to the Sweet 16 were about as great as Todd Bozeman returning as coach.

A year earlier, Duck sat sullen in a Dallas locker room and witnessed a program’s unraveling after an inglorious first-round NCAA loss to Iowa State. Guard Jelani Gardner was already plotting his transfer, star freshman center Shareef Abdur-Rahim his escape route to the pros.

Bozeman later would resign under pressure. Tremaine Fowlkes, another prodigy, was willing to return under new Coach Ben Braun if he was guaranteed playing time . . . in writing.

Fowlkes is now at Fresno State.

Duck reflected on how close he came to quitting.

“Yeah, ohhhhh, yeah,” Duck said. “I was very tempted to go. But I’ve never given up on anything in my life. I said to myself, ‘Why do I want to start now?’ ”

California has advanced to this year’s Sweet 16 not because it is the most talented team in the tournament. That farfetched notion ended Feb. 22, the day Ed Gray, the nation’s second-leading scorer, suffered a broken foot against Washington State.

Cal is two victories from the Final Four because the players who stayed left their personal agendas at the gym door. The ones who remained--six unheralded seniors and a junior tight end, Tony Gonzalez--were more interested in their sport’s defensive traps than its trappings.

“I would sacrifice every No. 1 high school player in the nation for the guys I have on this team,” Duck said. “Every one of them.”

The Bears who stayed have gone 4-1 since losing their star and would be this tournament’s biggest--what’s the girl’s name again, the one with the evil stepsisters?--story if not for Tennessee Chattanooga.

Has there been a more genuine NCAA tournament drive than Cal’s?

Tight end-forward Gonzalez, implored by his parents not to risk his first-round NFL career by playing basketball, sat at the news conference after the Villanova game with one of those disposable box cameras, actually taking pictures of the media.

Gonzalez could later show the prints to everyone who said it wasn’t worth flying to Hawaii the day after his final Pac-10 football game, Nov. 23 against Stanford, and playing basketball the next day against Iowa. He played nine minutes.

How was sitting on a couch in Berkeley, protecting his signing bonus, going to replace the 23 points he scored against Villanova last Saturday in Winston-Salem, N.C., while holding freshman phenom Tim Thomas scoreless in the second half?

“This is what it’s all about,” Gonzalez tried to explain after the game. “It’s not about money or shoe endorsements. Playing North Carolina in the Sweet 16 is what it’s all about. That’s college basketball in a nutshell.”

Who says father knows best?

“The people telling me not to play are my parents,” said Gonzalez, a projected first-round NFL pick from Seal Beach. “They’re afraid I’ll hurt my knee or ankle. But I’ve never gotten hurt playing basketball, knock on wood. This is something I love to do. I saw a guy from Purdue say [playing in the NCAA tournament] is a dream come true. This is why you stay after practice to work. This is why you keep getting in pickup games. This is why you work hard. This is where it’s at.”

If the current exodus of undergraduates and high school seniors to the NBA means the college game will be left with more teams like Cal, 1996-97, let them all go.

If it means the game will be entrusted to more Alfred Grigsbys, let the chosen children bolt after junior high.

The first time Grigsby touched the ball in this year’s tournament, the brainy Princeton student section started the chant, “Sixth-year senior!”

It was difficult to comprehend how that would be an insult. Grigsby, Cal’s starting forward, was granted a sixth year of eligibility by the NCAA last August after playing only 19 games the last three years because of injuries. Grigsby, a throwback to Cal’s 1993 Sweet 16 team, fought back from five surgeries--back, knee, ankle, buttocks, finger--to return to the lineup.

After Gray was injured Feb. 22, and the sky was expected to fall, Braun issued a challenge.

Braun told his players they’d have to raise their games to a higher level.

And they have, to a man.

Gonzalez, who averaged 4.6 points a game before Gray’s injury, has scored 14, 15, 20, 13 and 23 in the five games since.

Grigsby, who averaged 7.1 points, scored 16 against Arizona State, Cal’s first win without Gray. He totaled 21 in two NCAA games and had a career-high 13 rebounds against Villanova.

Duck, who averaged 12.2 points with Gray in the lineup, scored 22 against Arizona in the season finale and had 16 against Villanova on one good leg.

“We never packed it in when Ed went down,” Braun said.

Once again, the experts won’t be giving Cal much of a chance Friday against North Carolina in the East Regional semifinals at Syracuse, N.Y.

But Gonzalez is going to buy another disposable camera, just in case.

And Duck another roll of tape for his ankle.

“North Carolina?” Duck said. “Let’s play. Let’s throw it up. I’m looking forward to it like you cannot understand.”

SMITH RECORD

There is a campaign afoot to pronounce Dean Smith as college basketball’s greatest coach now that he has passed Adolph Rupp on the all-time victory list.

Let us once again pause to inject some reality.

What Smith has accomplished in 36 seasons at North Carolina is remarkable, fabulous, wonderful, amazing.

But until the night one coach is crowned with his 11th NCAA title, the greatest college basketball coach of all time is John Wooden.

Why is this even an issue?

Smith has won two NCAA titles in 36 years. Wooden won 10 in 29 seasons. Do the math. Fewer seasons, more titles.

Final Four winning percentage? Wooden was 21-3 (.875%). Smith is not among the top 11 coaches listed in that category in the NCAA’s Final Four record book.

People say, “Well, Wooden, that was another era.”

Yeah, an era never likely to be duplicated.

Again, this is not like comparing Pop Warner to Vince Lombardi, or Cy Young to Roger Clemens.

Wooden and Smith were contemporaries for 14 seasons, from 1961-62 through 1974-75, and in 10 of those seasons, UCLA won the national title.

North Carolina and UCLA met for the 1968 NCAA championship.

Remember?

Tom Hansen, current Pacific 10 Conference commissioner, attended the game at the L.A. Sports Arena.

“I remember the night he [Smith] went to a four-corner offense and conceded the championship because he couldn’t beat John Wooden,” Hansen said.

UCLA won the game, 78-55.

According to “The Dean’s List,” a book celebrating Smith’s career, the North Carolina coach surprised his players with the decision to stall against UCLA.

“Some of us might have thought, ‘Why are we doing this?’ ” former Tar Heel player Dick Grubar is quoted in the book is saying. “But most of us were good soldiers and went along.”

It is certainly no shame being the second-greatest basketball coach of all time behind Wooden.

But that is certainly what Dean Smith is.

LOOSE ENDS

Historical note to Providence Coach Pete Gillen, who used the words of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson to motivate his Friars in Sunday’s victory over Duke. Jackson died shortly after the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863--after being accidentally shot by his own soldiers.

Generals II: Indiana Coach Robert Montgomery Knight’s program appears in crisis after a third consecutive first-round NCAA exit. Hoosier followers say Knight lost emotional touch with his juniors--Andrae Paterson and Neil Reed, in particular--early in the season. And wasn’t it interesting that, the day after Indiana issued a news release stating that no Hoosiers had been asked to leave the program, Reed said he was leaving and that “the choice was not mine.”

Expect more shake-ups in Bloomington. Some think Knight needs to radically upgrade his recruiting and might bring in ousted Northwestern coach Ricky Byrdsong to lead the charge.

Nice to see Dick Vitale’s on-air job-placement program finally landed Duke assistant Tommy Amaker a job at Seton Hall. Now, Dick, what you can do for Jim Harrick?

How good has Stanford guard Brevin Knight been in the tournament? In playing 77 of 80 possible minutes, Knight has 37 points, 15 assists and one turnover.

Time to give the NCAA selection committee some credit. All four top-seeded teams--Kentucky, Minnesota, North Carolina, Kansas--have advanced to the round of 16. A No. 1-seeded team has won the last five NCAA tournaments.

The last non-No. 1 to win was No. 2 Duke in 1991.

Best matchup of the Sweet 16 may be St. Joseph’s Dimitri Domani guarding Kentucky’s Ron Mercer. Domani was the Atlantic 10 Conference’s defensive player of the year. His nickname is “the Club.”