LOS ANGELES — Cal forward Michelle Onyiah remembers the conversation, as brief as it was, in detail.
She was successful enough at Eleanor Roosevelt High in Riverside County to be a person of interest recruited by “one of my dream schools.”
However, Stanford assistant coach Kate Paye was on the line to deliver the bad news.
“I can still remember it. It was 8:30 at night,” Onyiah said of being told she wouldn’t be getting a scholarship offer from Stanford. “I think it was a 28-second phone call.”
Onyiah, an important inside presence for the eighth-seeded Bears (28-5) when they face No. 9 Mississippi State (21-11) Saturday at 2:30 p.m. at USC’s Galen Center, had the call from Paye on her mind when Cal beat Stanford 83-63 on Dec. 13 at Haas Pavilion.
Paye became Stanford’s head coach this season, succeeding Tara VanDerveer.
“I shook her hand, and I didn’t say it, but I was thinking, `You said I wasn’t good enough to go to your school and I just beat you by 20 points,’” Onyiah said. “It was all good. I got the last laugh.”
The Bears went on to sweep Stanford in their first season in the Atlantic Coast Conference and get their first NCAA Tournament berth since 2019. In the center of it all has been Onyiah and coach Charmin Smith, a former Stanford player under VanDerveer.
Onyiah chose Cal because it had the blend of academics and basketball, but nothing could have prepared her for a COVID-plagued freshman season that saw the Bears go 1-16. Between the pandemic and injuries, Cal had trouble even putting a team on the floor, let alone winning actual games.
There were Zoom meetings, social distancing and devices that monitored their movements in conjunction with others for contact tracing. Smith said it was difficult for her as an adult and can’t imagine what it was like for a college freshman.
Only Onyiah and Smith are still around from that team, with the Bears going 11-13, 13-17 and 19-15 in ensuing years before this year’s breakout season that included a 12-6 record in the ACC. There were moments where Onyiah pondered a change of scenery and the monetary possibilities of the NIL era.
It never happened, with Onyiah even sticking around for a fifth season as a graduate student.
“Michelle and I are connected for life,” Smith said. “She stayed. She could have left for more money or for teams that were winning and she stayed and said, `No, I want to do this, with us together.’ That’s really special.”
The 2020 season is a shared experience, as is helping the program stabilize and succeed. Smith has received contract extensions in each of the last two years.
“She helped me grow up,” Onyiah said. “We go back and forth and it’s fun. I support her and she’s supported me. We’ve got a good bond there.”
Not that Onyiah didn’t think about leaving. While Cal stayed intact after the COVID year, other prominent recruits began to transfer.
“Why did I stay? If I did leave I wanted to a school that was an equal academically, and Berkeley’s a really good school,” Onyiah said. “Plus I had a good group of teammates, good friends, and a cool community there. I was more than halfway done with college and I didn’t want to change.”
Onyiah, at 6-foot-3, is an athletic interior presence (12.2 rebounds, 7.4 rebounds per game) on a melting pot Cal team with an appealing style of play. Five players average in double figures. The Bears are among the national leaders in 3-point attempts with 294, with Onyiah the only starter who hasn’t attempted one.
Guards Ioanna Krimili from Greece and Lulu Twidale from Australia — Cal’s “Splash Sisters” — average 14.2 and 13.2 points per game. Forward Marta Suarez of Spain averages 13.2 and guard Kayla Williams, a Southern California native like Onyiah, averages 11.3.
The outside threats create room for Onyiah to use her quickness and post moves inside, as evidenced in a win over Miami when she scored 26 points on 12-for-14 shooting, showing the ability to score inside with both hands.
“I feel like last year we were still all learning how to play together,” Onyiah said. “This year we all learned our skill levels and where we needed to be for each other and maneuver around the court.”
It’s a long way from humble beginnings at Ramirez Intermediate School in Eastvale, where Onyiah appeared as a grade schooler to work out with a local boys AAU team.
“I was bad,” Onyiah said. “I didn’t know anything.”
But Onyiah worked diligently with Joe Statum, a Ramirez coach, and youth coach Chris Starks. Much like her persaverence at Cal, Onyiah has maintained those relationships and has come back in the offseason to work on her game.
“She calls us, and we go,” Statum said. “She didn’t know anything about basketball when she came to us, but she was a go-getter and she never quit.”
Starks said Onyiah was “fearless” when it came to playing with boys that were two or three years older. She eventually became serious about weight training and calisthenics and improved rapidly.
“She has this tenacity,” Starks said. “I know things weren’t going right at the beginning at Cal and she mentioned transferring. But she’s tough, she loves the game and doesn’t want to give up.”
Onyiah said she thought good things were in store for Cal after a 78-71 win over North Carolina State, a Final Four team a year ago and learned a valuable lesson in a one-sided road loss to Notre Dame, a national power and a No. 3 seed. A subsequent loss to Notre Dame in the ACC Tournament was much more competitive.
“We thought we could be something special, because North Carolina State was a top tier team,” Onyiah said. “Notre Dame, they do everything proper. We’re a good team too, but we have our lulls at times. We’ve played better since the Notre Dame game, less turnovers and being connected as a team.”