Counting Down Cal's Top-50 Transfer Athletes: No. 17 Jamal Boykin

The transfer portal era in college athletics seems like it’s been with us forever. Likewise, most fans can recall less turbulent times when transfers happened, they simply didn’t look like a stampede to the 1849 California Gold Rush.

We thought it was time to rank the best transfers Cal teams have attracted, most of them in recent seasons but also including a few OGs from yesteryear.

We limited our ranking to transfers from four-year colleges.

Here is the next athlete in our countdown:

17. Jamal Boykin

Sport: Basketball

Arrival year at Cal: 2007-08

Previous school: Duke (scored 29 points in 29 games in two seasons)

Contributions at Cal:

— A 6-foot-8, 240-pound forward, Boykin enjoyed the best season of his college career as a senior in 2009-10, averaging 11.9 points and 6.7 rebounds while leading the Pac-10 in field-goal accuracy at 58.4 percent.

— Boykin landed second-team All-Pac-10 honors as a senior, one of five Bears honored. Jerome Randle was voted Player of the Year, Patrick Christopher joined him as a first-team all-conference pick, Theo Robertson was named second team and Jorge Gutierrez was an all-defensive team selection.

— In an 84-69 loss to top-ranked and unbeaten Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse on Dec. 22 of his senior season, Boykin scored 15 points and grabbed a game-high 15 rebounds.

— Boykin averaged 13.0 points and 7.9 rebounds over the final eight games of the 2009-10 conference schedule, helping the Bears go 7-1, including wins over UCLA and Arizona, to clinch the Pac-10 regular-season title.

— Boykin averaged 10.0 points and 5.8 rebounds in 93 games at Cal, including 79 starts. He shot 54.8 percent from the field over his three seasons with the Bears.

— In his final college game, he had team-leading totals of 13 points and 11 rebounds — his eighth double-double of the season — in Cal’s 68-53 loss to Duke, his former school, in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

Standout performance: Boykin scored a career-best 25 points to go with 10 rebounds in Cal’s 78-70 victory at Arizona State his senior season. He shot 10 for 13 from the field and made all five of his free throws.

Impact on his team: Boykin was a key complementary starting player on a team that won the Bears’ first conference title in 50 years, since Pete Newell’s 1960 squad. They haven’t won another championship since. Cal’s 24 victories that season match the most they’ve had since going 28-2 in 1960.

Previously on our list:

No. 18 Andrej Stojakovic

No. 19 Jackson Sirmon

No. 20: Ray Green

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