Part I
During the 1992-93 season, the Banana Slugs men's basketball team turned into road warriors. The team ended up with three victories over Division II opponents and finished with the most wins in a season since moving to NCAA. In the last five years through the 2020 season, NCAA Division III men's teams have beaten a Div. II team just 14 times, an average of 2.8 games a year.
The build-up to the 90s started in summer 1989 when Cal graduate Bill Treseler became the school's fourth head coach, and started to make changes that helped grow the program, including starting to actively recruit players.
"Tressler was the first guy that actually had the outreach and started to build the foundation of the program," said Anthony Yannatta, a guard from Santa Monica. "He was the first guy actually to start trying to recruit. He took the team he inherited and focused on making sure that he established a level of seniority, so that the underclassmen could see there's a payoff for commitment."
Treseler inherited some talent, with point guard Allen Koochof (the school's career assist leader) and Ray Wilson (the school's top three-point shooter) already on the squad. By Treseler's second year in 1990-91, he had recruited transfer Cris Warmerdam, a 6-6 forward from Aptos, and Darren Shearer, a 6-5 forward from Ventura County.
"I sent a letter to Coach Bill Tressler. I wanted to go to UC Santa Cruz to study Marine Biology and I wanted to possibly play basketball so I came up to visit," Shearer recalled. "The school was awesome and I stayed with Ray and Allen in Oakes that one weekend, which was an eye-opening experience of being a high school kid."
The last piece of the puzzle was David Goldberg, a 6-7 forward from Los Angeles's Fairfax High who had played with several D-I players in High School. Goldberg wasn't recruited originally, but came to Santa Cruz because he liked the feel of the campus.
"I didn't play my first year. I just walked on campus and Tressler tried to hop through a fence to meet me," recalled Goldberg, who briefly played professionally in Israel after graduation. "I think I just ended up playing Intramurals my freshman year. Then by the time second year came around, I was reconnected with basketball."
Yannatta had a similar story, joining the team his sophomore year after playing several members of the team in intramurals.
Another key player that arrived in 1992 was Porterville's Ernie Bray, who transferred from Cal Lutheran. Building off the tenure of Wilson (who graduated as the NCAA's career-leader in three-pointers made) and with a bevy of great guards, Garner became an advocate of utilising the three-point shot.
"Playing there (Santa Cruz), that was the most fun I had," said Bray "because where I had previously come from, I wasn't able to shoot the way I wanted to and what I felt like I could. I remember when I got there (Santa Cruz), we had Anthony, (Matt) Vitti, and we were really, at that time, shooting threes like people do today-running and gunning."
After two years, Treseler left and was replaced by his assistant Duane Garner, who also coached the women's squad. After a 12-12 record in Garner's first year, the team ironically opened the 1992-93 season with Cal Lutheran in Menlo's tournament. Bray scored the winning basket against his old team off an assist from Goldberg in a 61-60 win.
Additionally, the Banana Slugs had spent the 1980s in two leagues (the Bay Area Athletic and California Athletic Conference) which both dissolved, leaving the school in the Independents wilderness for the first time and forcing tough scheduling that became a regular tradition. Without a league and a paucity of Division III opponents, van trips and higher division opponents were a necessary evil to put a schedule together. So the team did a lot of driving to get their games in.Â
"At that time, there were no teams up North. Menlo was kind of DIII and that was basically kind of it," Garner said. "We had to play NAIA, DII, we just got games where we could. A lot of travel in the vans, and I remember a couple of times, we had to get out of the vans and play like an hour after.
"It was a challenge to do this," Garner continued. "It was a challenge to practice, the facility was a challenge, the schedule was a challenge, there was no money for you."
Yannatta, however, lovingly recalls these "challenges" as a testament to Coach Garner's commitment. "I can't tell you the number of miles he put on that little minivan we were in. That's where the love for Coach Garner comes in," said Yannatta. "Coach Garner, in terms of his friendliness, his reliability, his desire to go get in the car and go, he lived and breathed this stuff."
