A pair of West Regional wins by Cal State Hayward in 1985 and 1986 created bonds that last to this day.
Cal State East Bay players celebrate their first NCAA Division II West Regional title in 30 years on March 16 in Hayward. When the school then known as Cal State Hayward made its last appearance in the NCAA Division II Elite Eight, star point guard Michael Harris learned a valuable lesson.
The Pioneers were fresh off a 87-83 win over Alaska-Anchorage at their home gym in the 1986 West regional, with a packed house of more than 3,000 cheering them on as they cut down the nets. Then came a trip to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to face host Southwest Missouri State. It was their second consecutive Elite Eight, having lost 62-58 to South Dakota State the previous year after beating Cal State Northridge in the West final. But when Cal State looked to step on the gas against Southeast Missouri State, something was missing. Their season ended with an 85-68 loss. “I never believed in jet lag until that game,” Harris said in a recent phone interview. “My legs just wouldn’t move. You get out there, and your legs are just dead. It really affected us. We knew we had the guys, our bodies just couldn’t keep up.”Saint Mary’s star forward announces transfer portal entry after Bennett departureCal State East Bay’s first Elite Eight challenge? A 7-foot-2, 371-pound center The good news is that unbeaten and No. 2 seed Cal State East Bay should have none of those concerns when it faces Oklahoma Baptist Wednesday at 11:30 at Cooper Fieldhouse at the University of Pittsburgh. The Pioneers arrived Sunday, have practiced and will attend a tournament banquet as well as doing some community outreach. At 34-0, East Bay will have advanced farther than any men’s basketball team in program history with a win over Oklahoma Baptist. A handful of Pioneers’ alumni were in attendance in a 73-58 win over Point Loma Nazarene in Hayward. A few of them met at Harris’ home to relive old times before the title game, then heading to the gym to see East Bay win a West regional for the first time in 40 years.“People are going to drop off the map, that’s just the way it goes, but when you still have some relationships that go back all this time, to still have that is pretty special,” said former Cal State guard Ric Toyloy. East Bay coach Bryan Rooney has his team at 33-0 one season after going 11-17. Gary Hulst, who came to Cal State in 1983, weathered a 1-25 first season with the program at an all-time low when he quickly built a team that won two West regionals. Hulst, named to the Cal State East Bay Hall of Fame in 2014, passed away at age 86 in 2022. Jim Moran, a 6-foot-7 center who was also the NCAA Division II high jump champ at 7-4 1/4, saw similarities between Cal State Hayward then and Cal State East Bay now. Cal State Hayward's Jim Moran celebrates after the Pioneers advanced to the NCAA Division II Elite Eight in 1986. Photo courtesy of Dino Vournas “I saw some of the same enthusiasm we had back in ’86 which was awfully fun to revisit, because it doesn’t always happen that way,” Moran said. “They seemed in some ways similar to us — they were scrappy on defense, played together and worked hard.” Toyloy said the current Pioneers are “more guard-oriented, where we were more of a front-court team . . . I didn’t see them run a lot of plays to get big buckets for easy guys and they could do a little more posting up, but they’ve played very consistently.” Cal State’s former players joke that it was their presence that helped give the school more of a campus feel. “I think the average student was a 27-year-old white female — a community school,” Toyloy said. “It’s totally different now.” Harris, a member of the Cal State Hall of Fame, liked the connectivity he saw among the players in the regional. “They play good as a unit. The defensive scheme works for them,” Harris said. “It seems like they have a great team camaraderie, and they don’t really care who’s the superstar or the standout player. They really play as a team to win and that’s an advantage they have. They use a lot of players and have fresh legs at the end.” Rooney has included alumni as much as possible in building his own program, has seen the bonds among former players and believes his own roster will feel the same way. “What this creates is life moments, when guys go to each other’s weddings, know the birthdays of the children, and you can come back to the great times you had together in your journey,” Rooney said. Max McCall, a reserve guard for East Bay, already has that sense of perspective. Small moments such as team meals and bonding on bus rides are to be cherished. “It means everything being part of something like this,” McCall said. “I knew we’d do some fun stuff, but to get the whole community involved, and people coming back to when it was called Cal State Hayward, you want to keep making them proud.”‘I feel horrible’: Ex-Antioch cop sentenced to prison for crimes of violence, ending massive police corruption probeMurder trial starts over 1 a.m. shooting outside Pleasant Hill barExclusive: Randy Bennett explains why he’s leaving Saint Mary’s for Arizona StateWarriors’ MRI reveals severity of Moody’s gruesome knee injury
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