Andy Wolfe, Cal's First Great Basketball Player, Dies at 99

Andy Wolfe, Cal’s first basketball All-American and star of their first Final Four team as a sophomore in 1946, died last Monday.

He was 50 days shy of his 100th birthday.

His daughter, Laura Roberts, said Wolfe passed peacefully on March 10 shortly after a hospital stay.

“We were really hoping he’d make it to 100 because we were planning a huge family party,” she said.

Wolfe played for the late coach Clarence “Nibs” Price, earning All-Pacific Coast Conference honors all three of his seasons on the varsity team through 1947-48. He graduated as the program’s all-time leading scorer and played for teams that compiled a record of 75-26.

Price, who led the Bears for 30 seasons, once called Wolfe the greatest player he ever coached. “A clutch player . . . nothing he couldn’t do perfectly, an inspirational leader and an All-American in the true sense of the word,” Price said.

Wolfe led the Bears in scoring at 13.4 points per game in 1945-46 and helped them earn a spot in the Final Four, before it was called that, where they lost 52-35 to Oklahoma A&M (now known as Oklahoma State) in the national semifinals at New York City.

Andy Wolfe dribbles past a defender. | Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics

He scored 19 points to spark a 55-36 win over Idaho in the decisive game of a best-of-three series to determine the champion of the PCC, then had 17 points in Ca’s 50-44 triumph over Colorado, which qualified the Bears for their trip to New York City.

Two years later, as a senior, Wolfe was a consensus second-team All-American. A 6-foot-1 combination guard/forward, he finished his career with 1,112 points — the first Cal player to surpass 1,000 points. Seventy-seven years later, he still ranks 36th on the Bears’ career scoring list.

Wolfe was selected 99th by the Philadelphia Warriors in the 1948 Basketball Association of America draft. He opted not to play in the BAA, the precursor to the NBA, but instead played high-level AAU ball for the Stewart Chevrolet team in San Francisco.

Why didn't he want to play professional basketball? "Because of me," said Andy Wolfe Jr., the oldest of the three kids. "He didn't want to be on the road."

Wolfe was an assistant coach on Price’s staff from 1951 through ’54 and he served as president of the university’s Big C Society in 1985.

Andy Wolfe on his 99th birthday with, from left, son Peter, daughter Laura and son Andy Jr. | Photo courtesy of Laura Roberts

Andy met his wife, Peggy, in a physiology lab at Cal and they were married two years later. They had three children, Andy Jr., Peter and Laura, and remained a couple for nearly seven decades until Peggy’s death in 2017.

An East Bay native and graduate of Richmond High School, Wolfe earned his law degree from the University of San Francisco School of Law and practiced in Oakland until his retirement.

Wolfe was inducted into the Cal Athletic Hall of Fame in 1987 along with former Cal coaching legend Pete Newell. He entered the Pac-12 Hall of Honor in 2006 and received the Pete Newell Lifetime Achievement Award from Cal in 2013.

“Growing up, they were the closest friends,” she said of other members of Wolfe’s Cal teams. For years, they would reunite for lunch once or twice a year, eventually including former Stanford players from that era.

“When people ask, `Where did you grow up, I go, Harmon Gym,’ “ daughter Laura said. “Because we went to all the games growing up. Lew Alcindor and Kevin Johnson and Jason Kidd . . we watched ‘em all. It was pretty cool. He was a great dad.”

Andy Jr. said his dad never boasted about his status as an elite Cal player.

“Honestly, he was a very humble. He didn’t about himself much at all,” Andy Jr. said. “We would ask, of course. We got the big picture because like Laura said, she grew up at Harmon Gym, as we all did.

“As a little kid I just remember going in there and just running around. It’s not like today, where you don’t let kids out of your sight. We were all over that gym . . . in the locker room, upstairs, downstairs. Just having a blast. In the process we met a lot of great California Bear basketball players over the years.”

Andy and Peggy owned a vacation home at Donner Lake where the family would gather several times a year for holidays, often including Thanksgiving or Christmas.

In retirement, Andy and Peggy traveled, including a trip to Russia shortly after the Berlin Wall was torn down. They also made a trip to Denmark, where Wolfe met his grandmother.

He lived in recent years at Rossmoor in Walnut Creek, where he was active in two domino groups with other residents.

Besides his three children, Wolfe is survived by 11 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.

The family is planning a private service.