As the Pac-12 Conference era comes to an end after more than a century, we count down the top 50 moments in University of California sports.
moment: With 1 minute, 14 seconds left in the second half at Washington State, Cal senior guard Ed Gray was fouled on his way to the basket, walked off the court to the free throw line and made two free throws for a team-record 48 points. He then spent the rest of the season on the bench because of a broken foot.
story: The UC basketball team had three outstanding scorers in the 1990s: Ramon Murray, who paired with Jason Kidd to lead the Bears to the Sweet 16 in 1993, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, who was the Pac-10’s leading scorer as a freshman in 1996, and Ed Gray.
Gray was a freshman in junior college and teammate of Abdur-Rahim the year before, before playing as a senior in coach Ben Brown’s debut season in 1996-97. Gray averaged a team record 24.8 points per game, second-best in the nation, but he wasn’t on the team when the Bears made an unexpected Sweet 16 appearance.
The 25th-ranked Bears were 10-4 in conference play and fresh off a win at Washington when they arrived in Pullman on Feb. 22. The Cougars gave UC their all, but Gray played admirably.
He missed the first half with foul trouble and had just nine points by halftime, but he added 38 points in the second half, 27 of which came in an incredible 6 minutes, 44 seconds.
“He’s a ticking time bomb,” said Washington State University’s Blake Pengelly.
“I think teams just stood there and watched,” Cal guard Anwar McQueen said. “And that was good today.”
After being fouled with 1 minute, 14 seconds left, Gray fell hard and broke his right leg. Other than making two game-tying free throws and scoring 48 points in just 25 minutes, his season was over.
Gray didn’t even know he’d broken John Coghlan’s 1972 school record until he left the hospital 90 minutes after the game. “When you play a game like that, you don’t really know what you did,” he said.
WSU won 89-87 and UC lost to Stanford in the ensuing game, but the Bears beat Arizona State and Arizona to finish the regular season and defeated Princeton and Villanova in the NCAA Tournament before losing to North Carolina, which featured Vince Carter and Antwuan Jamison, who were top-five NBA draft picks a year later.
* Top 50 Moments No. 22: Granger Record
* Top 50 Moments No.23: Puppy’s Promise
The Top 50 list only considers specific acts that occurred while a team or athlete was enrolled at UC and does not include season-long or career-long accomplishments.
Leslie Mitchell of the California Bears History Twitter site helped select the Top 50 moments.
Follow Cal Sports Report’s Jeff Faraudo on Twitter: @jefffaraudo
