At UCLA, Jackie Robinson led the Pacific Coast Conference in scoring twice in basketball.
Robinson achieved the feat in 1940 and 1941 while playing for UCLA’s men’s basketball team. More precisely, he led the conference’s Southern Division, averaging 12.4 points per game in 1940 and 11.1 in 1941. That accomplishment is easy to overlook because Robinson later became one of baseball’s most important figures.
His UCLA career was remarkably broad: he lettered in football, basketball, baseball, and track and field. He also won the 1940 NCAA broad-jump championship and led the nation in punt-return average in football in both 1939 and 1940.
The common mix-up is baseball, the sport most closely associated with Robinson. At UCLA, however, baseball was only one part of his athletic career; the two Pacific Coast Conference scoring titles belonged to basketball. He left UCLA in 1941, served in the U.S. Army during World War II, and debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.