Plenty happened at Haas Pavilion Sunday afternoon to make for a column. Cal took down rival Stanford thanks to a comeback from 11 points down and two late free throws from Paris Austin. It was the biggest crowd (9,168 reported attendance) the Bears have had at home in three years. The Cal Football team was in attendance with the Axe in tow. Even Raiders' head coach Jon Gruden, a friend of Mark Fox, was in attendance cheering on the Golden Bears.

This all happened, but it happened under a pall of shock and grief. Nine people passed in a helicopter accident in Calabasas Sunday. One of them was a man who influenced every player who saw the court in Haas Pavilion yesterday, Kobe Bryant.

“I grew up watching Kobe," graduate transfer guard Kareem South noted, "Kobe was one of my favorite players growing up and it was really shocking. It’s really hard to kind of absorb right now. It still doesn’t really feel real because he was such an inspiration."

"Kobe was my Jordan," Paris Austin added.

"I knew that Kobe was the one that maybe, is maybe the reason why they fell in love with basketball," head coach Mark Fox said.

It's impossible to talk about yesterday without the news of Kobe, a man who countless people invoke when they throw a balled up piece of paper into a bin. He was a man who embodied the investment that Fox talks about with his team, a player who had prodigious athletic gifts amplified by hours upon hours spent working on his craft. He was a player who wanted to have the ball in the final seconds of a game, like the situation that Austin found himself in with 17 seconds left. More importantly, he was a role model to young men, as a father advocating for women's basketball in his post-basketball life.

READ: Cal coaches and players react to the death of Kobe Bryant

Anything I write here won't do Kobe Bryant's legacy justice. He transcended the game of basketball. I made friends in elementary school thanks to a shared love of the 2000 Lakers, and I wasn't the only one. I sat in the car, driving to Haas, listening to sports talk radio, as countless numbers of young men talked about their experiences watching Kobe play, how it brought their family together, how it bonded them with friends. It was a sobering reminder of the power of sport, as a catharsis for grief over someone most people didn't ever have the opportunity to meet. That's how you know someone is special.

(Here are a few pieces I've read over the past 24 hours that can talk about Kobe Bryant's legacy better than I ever could)

Bill Plaschke on Kobe Bryant

Marcus Thompson: Kobe Bryant’s death hit me hard, and even worse because of what we had in common

Ramona Shelburne: Kobe Bryant never stopped trying to inspire

Molly Knight: Remembering Gigi Bryant (2006-2020)

It felt right to be around basketball Sunday. Mark Fox felt the same, as he told his team to honor Kobe with their effort. They put out the effort and came away with a win

- South rebounded from a tough performance against UCLA (0-7 from the field, 0 points) to finish with 13 points. This was only South's second double digit performance in Pac-12 play, after hitting double figures in 9 of Cal's 13 non-conference games.

- This was an outlier game for both Cal and Stanford. The Cardinal came in as the sixth best 3-point shooting team in the country, particularly behind the performance of Spencer Jones. They went 2-12 from beyond the arc, with South sticking on Jones heavily throughout the afternoon. Cal also turned the ball over only 7 times, the first time this year they've been under single digits in the metric all year (having had 18 turnovers in their loss at Stanford earlier in the month). Cal was also 5-17 on layups, something that you likely won't see again from the Bears

- Cal went cold for 4:22 of gametime which allowed for Stanford to make their run. It ended with Austin finding Andre Kelly for a resounding alley-oop that got the Haas crowd back into it. Stanford immediately hit a 3 to get their biggest lead afterward, but the Bears also had the advantage in the foul column. They got in the bonus with 10:01 left, and Matt Bradley took over.

- Cal went on a 13-2 run to tie the game at 41, with Bradley providing 9 straight points. Bradley had 12 of his 14 in the second half, having an off night with 4-14 shooting. His most important play came on a late in the clock isolation, driving, drawing defenders up in the air and finding a cutting Kelly for a basket and a 45-41 lead.

- Two big defensive things from Cal's true freshmen, with Lars Thiemann and Joel Brown forcing a couple turnovers. Thiemann hedged on a screen, moving his feet against Stanford's Tyrell Terry to force him to lose the ball early in the second half. Brown's came from staying in front of Daejon Davis, coming away with a steal with 26 seconds left to give the Bears the final possession. Fox noted earlier in the season that there were certain defensive plays made on instinct that the Bears weren't making, and those two in particular were ones the two have grown into making.

- The defensive effort against the Cardinal hinged on leaving Bryce Wills open outside, as the Cardinal sophomore was the sole Stanford starter shooting below 36% from beyond the arc. The strategy worked, though the Bears nearly allowed Wills a game-tying layup that was ruled to have come too late.

- A handful of late fouls nearly cost the Bears, with Andre Kelly fouling Terry in an and-1 situation to cut the Cal lead to one with just under five minutes left, Kelly fouling Oscar da Silva with just over a minute left (da Silva missed the front end of a 1 and 1 while the game was tied at 50), and Grant Anticevich fouling out with a push-off on the offensive end.

- Atmosphere-wise, it was the loudest Haas has been this year under Fox, with the courtside student section filled and behind the basket filled much further than other games before. School is back in session, which it wasn't for the Washington games, which helps.

- In all, the Bears eclipsed their win total from the past two years and tied their conference win total from a year ago.

- Austin was the MVP of the game, per KenPom, with a tidy 15 points, 4 assists, only one turnover, and the game winning free throws. He also had the play of the night, a steal and dunk on the other end as Wills tried to reject him.

Cal is now 9-2 at home with the Oregon schools coming to town, Oregon coming in first on Thursday night at 6 PM