Darrall Imhoff, who helped Cal win NCAA title, dies

Darrall Imhoff, who helped Cal win NCAA title, dies

Darrall Imhoff, the starting center on Cal’s 1959 NCAA championship team and an NBA player for 12 seasons, died Friday evening near his home in Bend, Ore.

Friends said Mr. Imhoff was playing miniature golf when he had a heart attack and collapsed.

Earl Shultz, a fellow freshman who went on to play on the 1958-59 team, immediately dismissed Mr. Imhoff as any kind of player.

The turning point came in a game at USC in Mr. Imhoff’s sophomore season.

“Big, tough guy named Jim Hanna went up for a hook shot, and Darrall sent it all the way to halfcourt,” Shultz recalled.

He had Bob McKeen (a former Cal forward) work with Darrall every day in practice, working on positioning, center moves, little hook shots.

“The kind of players Pete had, they might not be the material I’d pick,” said UCLA’s John Wooden in a 1990 interview.

Mr. Imhoff wound up being a teammate of West’s on the 1960 Olympic team, coached by Newell and featuring a number of future NBA greats.

Mr. Imhoff was the Knicks’ starting center that night.

Two nights later, the teams met again at Madison Square Garden.

Newell was proud to proclaim that all of the players on the ’59 championship team graduated, although it took Mr. Imhoff a while.

The previous season, facing the last of Russell’s championship teams with the Boston Celtics, Mr. Imhoff averaged 18.2 points and 16.4 rebounds in a five-game series loss in the Eastern Conference semifinals.