The afternoon of Jan. 25, 1986 started the evolution of college basketball in San Francisco.

It’s to the point now where Kansas University coach Roy Williams will roll into Oakland for Saturday’s Pete Newell Challenge as just another coaching legend.

Williams’ status is unquestioned. He has the highest winning percentage of all active Division I coaches with at least six years’ experience.

He has been to the NCAA Tournament in 14 of his 15 seasons as a head coach, and the only reason he didn’t make it the other year was because he inherited a team on NCAA probation that was ineligible for postseason play.

Two months ago he was chosen to be the fifth recipient of the John R. Wooden Legends of Coaching Award. He’s been to the Final Four three times and has a reasonable chance of making it a fourth this season.

Those credentials have earned Williams a reputation as one of college basketball’s top coaches, but they represent a rather pedestrian record compared with his predecessors in the Pete Newell Challenge. In just its sixth year of existence, the Newell event has already developed a history of featuring famed coaches.

The addition of Williams means coaches who participated in the Pete Newell Challenge have been to 24 Final Fours and have won eight national championships. Williams’ inclusion also means that a Pete Newell Challenge coach has been in 16 of the past 17 Final Fours.

The list is a who’s who of college coaches: Bob Knight (three national titles), Mike Krzyzewski (three national titles), Tom Izzo (three consecutive Final Fours, one NCAA title), Jim Harrick (one national title), John Chaney (sixth among active coaches in wins), Mark Few (81 wins his first three seasons, an NCAA record), Bill Guthridge (two Final Fours in three seasons as a college head coach).

Dean Smith, the all-time leader in career victories, was North Carolina’s coach when the Tar Heels committed to the 1998 Pete Newell Challenge, but he retired.

One other note on these august resumes. Other than Knight, none of them has won a game at the Pete Newell Challenge. Cal’s Ben Braun is 4-0 in the Newell, with wins over Georgia, Brigham Young, North Carolina and Gonzaga, and Stanford’s Mike Montgomery is also 4-0, beating Duke, Mississippi State, Temple and Michigan State.

The 1998 victory of unranked Cal over No. 9 North Carolina before a crowd of 19,657, the largest crowd ever to see a basketball game in California at the time, may have been the high point of modern Bay Area college hoops until the 2000 Pete Newell Challenge, when No. 3 unbeaten Stanford beat unbeaten No. 1 Duke, 84-83.

Six first-round draft choices and four first-team All-Americans participated in that Stanford-Duke game, which was overwhelmingly voted the national game of the year in an ESPN.com poll.

Among the record crowd of 19,804 at the Arena was Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, Dusty Baker, Tony La Russa and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.