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One of the greatest Cal offensive football players tries to evade the greatest Cal defensive football players either. This could be epic. Who moves onto the Elite Eight?
Andre Carter's road: Beat Syd'Quan Thompson in the second round, Ryan Anderson in the first round.
Russell White's road: Beat Alexis Grey-Lawson in the second round, first round bye.
Voting ends Friday at noon PT. Click here to view the full bracket.
The case for Russell is laid out below. He made it all the way to the Sweet 16 before falling to Jason Kidd.
LeonPowe: Superman. One of the 3 best running backs (some would argue the best ever) to play at Cal. Finished in the top 5 in Heisman as a junior. Carried Cal to a #7 National ranking at the end of the 1991 season. Hurdled a Purdue player well before anyone else did it.
Cal's all-time leading rusher was perhaps the biggest recruiting coup in school history. Controversy surrounded White's decision to move from Crespi HS to Berkeley, since he was a Prop 48 student who had not achieved a qualifying SAT score. A summer of tutoring revealed that Russell was dyslexic, and he would go on to earn his degree in social welfare in four years with a B average.
He would also go on to become Cal's all-time leading rusher, behind 1,000 yard efforts in 1991 and 1992. Fifteen times he rushed for at least 100 yards in a game, including a 229-yard effort in Cal's record setting 52-30 beatdown of USC in 1991. With White, the Bears reversed a decade of futility and won back-to-back bowls in 1990 and 1991. His '91 season, with 1,177 yards rushing and fourteen touchdowns earned White first-team All-America honors from the Walter Camp Foundation and the FWAA.
Now thanks to Prd74, we all get to bask in Russell's greatness a little; his freshman campaign in 1990 had some great moments, including a 99 yard kickoff return against Miami in the first video and an utterly insane run starting at 4:24 in the second vid.
MinerNiner lays out the case for Carter.
Carter played for the California Golden Bears from 1996-2000. During his junior and senior years he was a unanimous All-Pac 10 Conference selection. In 2000 he won the Morris Trophy, awarded to the Pac 10’s top defensive lineman as voted on by the starting offensive lineman from the conference. In addition to being selected as the Golden Bears’ most valuable player, Carter was also a finalist for the Bronko Nagurski Trophy, given to the nation’s top defensive player. Finished as the school’s all-time sacks leader.
#2 seed Scott Fujita was also big on his old teammate, calling Carter his favorite teammate (HT kolwave).
When Fujita got to Cal as a 6-4, 195-pound safety who was the last man on the depth chart, his intensity on the practice field routinely perturbed his veteran teammates. "I was kind of the annoying, walk-on, ‘Scout Team All-American’ who irritated the old guys," Fujita explained. […] It was hard not to feel excluded, especially when everyone was lining up for training table and I wasn’t allowed to eat. Andre Carter would sneak me food all the time. He really took care of me in every way. He’s my brother from another mother."
White might've been more important for us at Cal, but Carter has definitely had the better professional career.