BERKELEY - When he came to Cal in the early 1980s as a member of the men's basketball team, Michael Pitts had designs on utilizing his 7-foot frame to make an impact inside Harmon Gym and possibly beyond.

Over three decades later, Pitts will step onto the hardwood of Haas Pavilion and the reason will have significantly more to do with the positive impact he made outside the gym than what he accomplished on the court.

The San Diego, Calif. native will be celebrated at halftime of Cal's game against Stanford as the 2016 recipient of the Pete Newell Career Achievement Award, an honor presented to a Cal men's basketball alumnus who has distinguished himself in his career accomplishments, upholding the highest ideals of Coach Newell and the University of California.

"It means a lot to me," Pitts said. "You think about that name and the impact he's made on the university and basketball in general. Hes one of the Mount Rushmore coaches of basketball, period."

Pitts played at Cal from 1980-84, earning the Nibs Price Award for Team MVP in 1983 and eventually getting drafted by the San Antonio Spurs. He played for three years overseas before returning to the Bay Area but knew he wanted to find work that dealt with young people and began working in the field of juvenile probation in Alameda County.

Soon, he switched counties, worked his way up the ranks in Contra Costa County and landed at the Orin Allen Youth Rehabilitation Facility in Byron where he eventually became superintendent of the 100-bed facility that serves as a treatment center for adolescent delinquent youngsters.

As he moved through his professional career, Pitts' Cal experience served not only as a way to reminisce but also as a teaching tool for the youngsters he'd come across. He came to Berkeley as a highly decorated high school player, earning CIF Player of the Year honors at Sweetwater High School in 1979, and had to adjust to life away from home just as any college student would.

"One of the things I tried to bring to kids I was dealing with was I came into Cal with a lot of assumptions," Pitts said. "I used to tell kids about the power of assumptions. I assumed I would be comfortable here, I assumed I would graduate and later I found out that's not such a guaranteed assumption."

Pitts worked for 22 years at Orin Allen, retiring in 2012. That didn't mean his work with at-risk kids in the community ended. He now sits on the board of directors for the Youth Intervention Network (YIN), a group based in Antioch that works with the Antioch Unified School District to tackle issues surrounding truancy and the correlation it has to juvenile delinquency.

He's also stayed connected with his alma mater through a combination of being active in the Big C Society and friends and mentors that have lasted through the years. As a result, being asked to return to accept an award associated with one of basketball's legendary coaches carries just a little extra meaning.

"I'm really, really excited about this," Pitts said. "I never really considered myself a nostalgic person but I've kept in touch with the university ever since I left. If you wouldve told me when i was 18 or 19 that I would still have a connection to the university, I would have never believed it."