Top Cal Sports Stories of 2021-22: Justin Wilcox Turning Down Oregon Heads the List

The 2021-22 Cal academic year has ended, and the Bears’ sports programs experienced triumph and disappointment, along with a disturbing controversy that emerged in recent weeks.

As summer arrives, we look back at the past year and rank Cal’s 10 biggest sports stories:

1. JUSTIN WILCOX TURNS DOWN HIS ALMA MATER: The Bears won just five games during the 2021 football season but scored their biggest victory a week after the schedule ended.

Coach Justin Wilcox shocked Oregon in early December when he turned down a job offer from his alma mater, opting to return to Cal, which signed him to a six-year contract extension that will pay him $28.5 million, before bonuses.

Oregon could have paid Wilcox more, much more if it came down to money. The Ducks offer the lure of a program that can compete for a national championship.

But Wilcox said no thanks. "If we continue along this path, we can do some great things here," Wilcox said of his decision to remain at Cal, "and things that haven't been done before.”

Even while going 5-7 last fall, the Bears did something they hadn’t achieved since 2003, beating Stanford and USC in the same season. Aaron Rogers was Cal’s quarterback that season, although Reggie Robertson was the hero against the Trojans, coming on in relief to help secure a 34-31 overtime victory.

Chase Garbers was the Bears’ headliner this time, joining exclusive company by securing his second career victory over Stanford.

2. TERI McKEEVER EMBROILED IN SCANDAL: Perhaps the most successful collegiate women’s swim coach in history, Teri McKeever’s career is very much in jeopardy as the result of an investigation by the Orange County Register that last month revealed widespread allegations of bullying and abuse of her current and former athletes.

Cal put McKeever — a former U.S. Olympic team head coach — on paid administrative leave. Athletic director Jim Knowlton said the university’s investigation could take six months.

The most recent chapter in what is a sad and disturbing saga was reporter Scott Reid’s story Sunday that 17 more individuals have come forward, bringing the total to 35 who are providing details of alleged abuse by McKeever.

“She needs to be out of the swimming world,” said Lindsey (King) Loncaric, who swam on the team in 2006-07. “I don’t care what it says on her resume. She treats people terribly.”

McKeever, 60, has declined requests to be interviewed and Cal officials are limited in what they can say because of privacy issues.

Leann Toomey, who was an All-America swimmer at Cal, said the trauma she endured was so severe she attempted suicide more than a decade after her career ended. “That voice that creates all this doubt in you, I named it `Teri,’ “ she told the newspaper, citing F-bombs, body shaming, taunting, belittling, screaming and threats. “That negative voice in my brain has her name.”

3. COVID RULING HANDICAPS CAL VS. ARIZONA: One week after the Bears seemingly turned their football season in the right direction with a 39-25 victory over Oregon State came news that 24 players — including quarterback Chase Garbers — and five coaches would not travel with the team to Arizona because of COVID-19 issues.

Arizona had lost a conference-record 20 consecutive games, but the Wildcats prevailed 10-3 at Tucson against a Cal team completely toothless on offense. With transfer Ryan Glover running the offense, the Bears totaled just 122 yards and the loss left them needing wins in their final three games to become bowl eligible. They won just two of them and were left out of the postseason.

The reaction of Cal players ranged from frustrated to furious. Garbers tweeted that players got no straight answers from University Health Services. He said players were told that tests the week leading to the game were mandatory, then learned they were not.

4. GROWING IMPACT OF THE TRANSFER PORTAL: The transfer portal continues to gain popularity among athletes across the country, and Cal was impacted by both directions of the equation.

Center Andre Kelly, the best player on Cal’s basketball team most of the season, announced afterward he was declaring for the NBA draft and entering the transfer portal. Kelly wound up opting to transfer to UC Santa Barbara. He follows Matt Bradley, the team’s top scorer the two previous seasons, who transferred a year ago to San Diego State.

Coach Mark Fox landed two Division I transfers this offseason, including former five-star guard prospect Devin Askew, most recently from Texas, and guard DeJuan Clayton, who scored more than 1,500 points at Coppin State.

The Cal women’s team lost three players to the transfer portal, including part-time starters Dalayah Daniels and Cailyn Crocker, then reloaded with a pair of arriving transfers.

The football team saw running back Christopher Brooks exit for Purdue before changing his mind and settling on BYU. Wide receiver Nikko Remigio, with one year of eligibility remaining, announced he will play next season at Fresno State under former Bears coach Jeff Tedford. And starting offensive guard McKade Mettauer opted to move on to Oklahoma.

But the Bears also landed transfer quarterback Jack Plummer, formerly of Purdue, who emerged from spring practice looking like the heir to replace departed starter Chase Garbers.

Cal got defensive help out of the portal from linebacker Jackson Sirmon, formerly of Washington and the son of Bears’ defensive coordinator Peter Sirmon, and from defensive end Xavier Carlton, who played the past two seasons at Utah.

5. CAL ROWING TOPPLES YALE FOR IRA CROWN: The fact that Cal’s triumph over Yale in the varsity eight boat at the IRA Grand Finals allowed the Bears to capture their 100th all-time national championship was merely a footnote to the occasion.

The more personal subplot to No. 1 Cal’s victory over the No. 2 Bulldogs at West Windsor, N.J. earlier this month was the fact that Bears coach Scott Frandsen rowed at Berkeley under Steve Gladstone, now the coach at Yale.

Gladstone coached 20 seasons at Cal, winning five national championships. He also served as athletic director.

His Yale program produced national titles in the three most recent seasons it participated — 2017, ’18 and ’19, with the IRA canceling the event due to COVID-19 in 2020, and Ivy League schools suspending athletics in 2021.

Cal won its 18th national championship in the sport, the first under Frandsen and the first since 2016.

6. BASKETBALL WOES CONTINUE: Denizens of Haas Pavilion must be wondering when success will return to the Cal men’s and women’s basketball programs.

The Cal men have now suffered an unprecedented five straight losing seasons, four of which produced at least 20 defeats. The Bears previously had experienced just two 20-loss seasons in more than 100 years of hoops.

Former coach Wyking Jones was just 5-31 in conference play in two seasons after replacing Cuonzo Martin before the 2017-18 season. Mark Fox inherited a dearth of talent, made some progress in Year 1, was slammed by COVID-19 issues a year later and couldn’t get over the hump this past season.

Fox’s teams are 35-58 in three seasons, 15-43 in Pac-12 play. Cal’s men haven’t played in the NCAA tournament since 2016, and haven’t won a game in the event since back in 2013.

The women won as recently as 2018-19, when star senior Kristine Anigwe led them to a 20-13 record and a first-round victory in the NCAA tournament. But coach Lindsay Gottlieb exited for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work as an assistant with the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA, and successor Charmin Smith hasn’t been able to maintain momentum.

The Cal women rallied from a 1-16 ledger in 2020-21 to go 11-13 this past season. But they they have not competed in conference play under Smith, going 6-37 against Pac-12 rivals in three seasons.

7. ROBERT PAYLOR WALKS AT GRADUATION: Cal’s best feel-good story in years was penned last August by former rugby player Robert Paylor, who walked on the stage at the Greek Theater to accept his diploma four years after suffering a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed.

Paylor never accepted the prognosis of doctors who said he would not walk again. Immediately after he was injured during the Bears’ 2017 national championship game victory over Arkansas State, it was uncleared whether he would live.

“They were still playing rugby around my numb, motionless body,” Paylor told the Mercury News in a 2020 interview. “I looked like a corpse.”

But on Aug. 31 of last year, in front of 6,000 fellow graduates, friends and family, Paylor stood up from his wheelchair, took more than a dozen steps and accepted his diploma as the crowd stood and cheered.

No one who saw him do it will ever forget the moment.

8. CAL WINS MEN’S SWIM TITLE: While grim controversy has swallowed up the Cal women’s swim program, the men continued an impressive run of excellence.

Coach David Durden’s squad used a powerful final day to pull away from Texas and capture its seventh NCAA swimming and diving title. The Bears have finished among the top two finishers for 12 consecutive seasons.

“It’s the best meet in the world to see a group of young men really go after a goal and do it for each other,” said Durden, whose program has produced five national championships since 2011. “We sort of knew how the path of this meet was going to go, knowing our last day was going to be our best day.”

And that’s just what happened. The Bears’ lead entering the final day was just 7.5 points but they toppled the Longhorns 487.5 to 436.5. Destin Lasco won the 200-yard backstroke to open the final day, but Cal’s strength was its balance and depth.

9. CAL WINS WATER POLO TITLE: Nikos Delgrammatikas scored the game-winning goal with 28 seconds left and the Bears beat USC 13-12 in December to win their first of Cal’s three national championships this academic year.

It was Cal’s 15th NCAA title in men’s water polo, its first since 2016. Coach Kirk Everist, whose team completed a 22-4 season, won his fourth national title in 20 years.

The Bears were powered all season by Nikolaos Papanikolaou, who earned Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Player of the Year honors, MVP of the NCAA tournament and subsequently was given the Pete Cutino Award as the nation’s top player.

Delgrammatikas — Papanikolaou’s fellow native from Athens, Greece — could barely wrap his head around the victory. “I’m out of this world, man,” he said. “I can’t even believe this.”

10. CAMRYN ROGERS SPARKS TRACK & FIELD RESURGENCE: Perhaps no Cal athlete enjoyed a better year than senior Camryn Rogers. After finishing fifth in the hammer throw while representing Canada at the Olympics last summer, Rogers broke the collegiate record for the fifth time this spring on the way to capturing her third straight NCAA title.

She finished her career unbeaten vs. collegiate competition for more than three years and as the owner of the 11 longest throws in NCAA history. On Monday, Rogers was named one of four candidates nationally for the Honda Sports Award for track and field.

Rogers wasn’t the only member of the Cal throws team who excelled this season. Freshman Mykolas Alekna twice broke the collegiate record in the men’s discus and was unbeaten all season before losing by one inch at the NCAA meet.

Rogers, Alekna, Anna Purchase (hammer throw) and Iffy Joyner (discus) all earned All-America honors, the first time since 1922 — at the first NCAA meet a full 100 years ago — that as many as four Cal throwers achieved that status.

Cover photo of Cal coach Justin Wilcox greeting former Oregon coach Mario Cristobal by Troy Wayrynen, USA Today

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo