There is something about the heart and soul of the Cal men’s basketball team — the hustle, the grit, the attitude.
It comes from something deep inside the arc of a changing sport.
Gone is the era of the senior-laden team, a core group of veterans guiding a squad through thick and thin, adversity and adventure, from potential to the promised land.
Except in Berkeley.
Harper Kamp and Jorge Gutierrez buck that trend. With every charge taken, ball stolen, foul drawn and extra pass made, Cal’s two seniors are reminding people what is great about college basketball. It’s not the glitz and glamour of the NBA, the alley-oops, the isolations. It’s about student-athletes playing for love of the game.
College basketball has become a grand detour instead of the tour of grandeur it once was. Stars stay one season and bolt for the pros. Much was made of the star freshmen who returned for a sophomore season — Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger, Kentucky’s Terrence Jones, North Carolina’s Harrison Barnes — but does anyone believe they’ll ever become upperclassmen? Or build a true legacy?
Harper Kamp and Jorge Gutierrez are not going to bring a national championship to Berkeley. Yet the pair’s legacy within the Cal program and around the conference is cemented. They, along with head coach Mike Montgomery, brought Cal basketball back to prominence.
Kamp missed the entire 2010 Pac-10-title winning season due to a medical redshirt, but Gutierrez was an integral part of that squad. The Bears have since taken on the personalities of Gutierrez and Kamp, and it has turned them into champions. They became scrappy. They started playing physical defense. They stopped shooting so many 3-pointers. And they always make the extra pass. Now they are looking at their second conference crown in three years.
“They’re worth their weight in gold,” Montgomery said. “They’re the difference for us, because they’ve set the tone for everybody else. Part of the reason we’re able to be where we are is because of those two.”
Montgomery came to Berkeley in April of 2008 to build something. All the pieces mattered.
One block he had already. Kamp was coming off a freshman season in which he played in all 33 games but scored in double figures just twice. He’s matured into a double-digit scorer as an upperclassman.
Gutierrez was Cal’s defensive stopper and glue guy for two seasons. He became the squad’s leader and leading scorer as a junior. Now he is arguably the most well-rounded player in the conference and the front-runner for Pac-12 Player of the Year.
The Bears have beaten Stanford at home all four years of Montgomery’s tenure. That hasn’t happened in 40 years. Those four years are also the entirety of Gutierrez’s Cal career. And they overlap with Kamp’s too.
The seniors’ final two games at Haas Pavilion are Thursday and Saturday. Their illustrious careers are winding down, and soon they will be just another pair of golden jerseys, only memories of the Cal careers of the bluest blood. You won’t want to have missed them in action.
There might not be other players like them. There might not be another program like theirs.
Give them the standing ovation they deserve, the respect they’ve earned, the admiration they ought to cherish.
Bid them adieu, goodbye and adios. Because just like that — poof — they’ll be gone.