Ray Goss, whose 58 seasons at Duquesne represented college basketball’s longest stretch as a play-by-play announcer and who, just weeks ago, following a near-fatal vehicle accident in Indiana County, vowed to return to the microphone for at least another year, has died.

A Carnegie native and Duquesne graduate who spent most of his life as an Indiana resident, Goss was 89 and succumbed to a heart attack Tuesday morning at Indiana Regional Medical Center, said his oldest daughter, Christine Brownlee, of White.

“He was doing pretty well, and he was scheduled to be moved (Wednesday) to St. Andrew’s Village for physical therapy,” she said. “He was so bored sitting around in the hospital. He couldn’t wait to get outside.”

Goss, who had been hospitalized since the early-April accident, had been Duquesne’s basketball play-by-play man for 58 years, one more than Pitt’s Bill Hillgrove.

“Terrible news,” Hillgrove said. “Ray was not only a very talented broadcaster and a legend, but he was a really good guy. He was very self-effacing. He didn’t have that ego thing, and I respected that.”

A radio legend whose broadcasting career began in 1958 and, like Hillgrove, led to his induction in 2023 into the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame, Goss had been hospitalized since crashing his SUV on April 2 while traveling on Route 119 on his way to some routine testing in neighboring Punxsutawney.

Goss’ vehicle crossed the center line near the Indiana-Jefferson county line and clipped the rear of a passing garbage truck before rolling onto its roof.

“I wasn’t tired, but all of a sudden, I must’ve lost control of the car,” Goss told TribLive in an April 6 interview. “The next thing I knew, I ended up upside down hanging from the seatbelt. The airbag probably saved my life.”

Goss was unable to attend when Duquesne honored his life and legacy April 15 during the Chuck Cooper Centennial Gala at the university’s Power Center.

“Man, I’m gutted,” said Darren Zaslau, one of Goss’ current broadcasting partners for Duquesne basketball games,. “There is nothing that Ray Goss wouldn’t do to put Duquesne basketball on the air. He was iconic, and you would have to rip the microphone out of his hand if you were to tell him he couldn’t call the games anymore.”

Goss’ smooth, familiar voice most recently could be heard during Duquesne basketball radio and internet broadcasts on iHeart Network.

“He was just the kindest guy, the salt of the earth,” Duquesne interim athletics director John Henderson said. “Ray mostly was fond of two things in his life: his family and Duquesne basketball. I appreciated him. I think he’ll be calling our games from Heaven now because he’ll never stop calling Duquesne basketball games.”

Funeral arrangements for Goss were incomplete.

This story will be updated.