His first language was Hungarian, and there's a lot about Budapest he misses. He knows how hard it is to find rakott krumpli in Palo Alto.

"They don't exactly make it here," Rosco Allen said of his favorite dish, which consists of potatoes, smoked Hungarian sausage, eggs, cheese and sour cream.

He's enjoying the rest of the college experience. He's been a Stanford student less than four months, but he knows how important the Cal rivalry is from seeing how big the Big Game was during football season.

The 6-foot-9 freshman will match elbows and talents with the Bears for the first time at Maples Pavilion at 1:30 p.m. Saturday.

Allen is getting just 13 minutes a game, which explains why his scoring (4.2) and rebounding (2.3) averages are so low. Give him time, and he should make his mark on Pac-12 basketball. Just as his former high school teammate, Shabazz Muhammad, is already doing at UCLA.

Their Bishop Gorman High School team in Las Vegas, which had several other future Division I players, probably could have beaten some lower-echelon college teams. It won three state titles in four years.

At Stanford, Allen gave a glimpse of what he can do when he scored nine of his season-high 11 points in the final five minutes of a 65-59 win over Lafayette just after Christmas.

"He has all the skills of a perimeter player," coach Johnny Dawkins said. "He can put the ball on the floor. He can take it to the basket. He's also a terrific shooter. He's made just one three this year, but that's going to come for him as things start to slow down."

Dawkins said it was easy to see the European influence on Allen's game when he saw him play with Gorman and a summer club team in Vegas.

"A lot of times players over here don't get a well-rounded foundation," Dawkins said. "There, the bigs and the perimeter players all do the same drills."

Allen is adept enough at ball-handling and passing that he played point guard as a junior in high school. At a camp in Chicago last summer, Oklahoma City Thunder star Kevin Durant told him, "I love you, Rosco, because you're like myself. You're like a point forward."

His 6-foot-6 father, Daniel Allen, played basketball and high-jumped at Pinole Valley High and received a scholarship offer to USF. But he didn't care for school, so he decided to travel instead and went to work for an oil company. He also played summer club basketball in Hungary.

"My son is much more talented than I've ever been," Daniel, 54, said.

He lived in Milan, Paris and Athens. In Greece, he met a Hungarian woman named Brigitta who told him on their second day together that they would marry and have five kids. Right and right.

He worked in such far-flung places as Aruba in the Caribbean and Kuwait. He became a nuclear technician at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania in the 1980s after the meltdown. He worked as an advertising consultant in the fashion industry.

He and his wife traveled throughout Europe. "We got to do all the things people dream about doing," he said.

Home was Budapest, where Rosco - after an early stint in soccer - moved up the ranks in basketball with the MAFCA club. In the 9- and 10-year-old "kangaroo league," he scored 63 points in a game. Then, as now, he didn't show a lot of expression in the game.

Eight years ago, the family moved to Las Vegas because Daniel's father, who lived there, was not in good health. He died two years ago. Daniel now is a wine buyer for a department store. His wife is studying for a second master's, this one in speech therapy.

It was hard for young Rosco to leave his friends in sixth grade, although he thought the move would help his chances of playing college basketball. The whole family was in culture shock when they flew into Las Vegas at 4 a.m., and the city, of course, was all lit up.

"It was 80 degrees," he said. "We were used to chilly weather."

He needed to work hard on his English in school.

"Over there I spoke Hungarian except when I was at home," he said. "Here I spoke English except when I was at home."

He maintains his Hungarian by regularly calling his grandmother and uncle in Budapest. His mother makes him read a Hungarian newspaper aloud to her on Skype.

Allen was recruited by roughly 35 colleges. His mother has prepared five-course meals for a who's-who of American college coaches, including North Carolina's Roy Williams, Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, Oregon's Dana Altman and Dawkins.

"I'd buy a used car from that guy," Brigitta said of Williams.

At practice Rick Pitino told Allen, "I'm offering you right now if you want to go to Louisville."

The family was impressed when Dawkins handed their son a Stanford diploma - it had his name on it - and said, "When you leave Stanford with this diploma, you'll be making $100,000 a year." The parents liked his low-key approach.

Others weren't as impressive to Allen and his parents. Of Kevin O'Neill, recently fired by USC, Daniel Allen said, "Every fifth word was a cuss word."

Many of the coaches belittled each other, to the point that Allen's mother decided, "I will never let another one of those guys in my door."

Daniel said, "The Hungarian people love honesty. A few of them said, 'Don't go to Stanford. They're' never going to get you to the Big Dance.' Some are Gestapo; some are Mary Poppins."

In the end, Rosco picked Stanford over North Carolina, UNLV and Oregon. "It came down to academics," he said, "and there's a great tradition here that I really enjoy."

Saturday's game

Who: Cal (10-8, 2-2 Pac-12) at Stanford (10-7, 1-3)

When: 1:30 p.m.

TV/Radio: Channel: 36 / 1050, 910
