Counting Down Cal's Top-50 Transfer Athletes: No. 18 Andrej Stojakovic

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:

18. Andrej Stojakovic

Sport: Basketball

Arrival year at Cal: 2024-25

Previous school: Stanford (Averaged 7.9 points as a freshman in 2023-24)

Contributions at Cal:

— The son of Hall of Famer Peja Stojakovic more than doubled his scoring average from the year before in his lone season with the Bears. He scored 17.9 points per game to go with 4.7 rebounds.

— A 6-foot-7 guard, Stojakovic scored 16 points in his Cal debut and notched double-digit totals in his first 16 games with the Bears.

— Stojakovic had a six-game stretch in November and December when he averaged 21.2 points and scored 20 points or more five times. That included a 26-point effort in a 98-93 loss at Missouri, where the Bears could not sustain a 15-point halftime lead.

— He scored at least 20 points 12 times, including 31 in a nonconference win over Northwestern State and 30 in an ACC defeat to Clemson.

— Stojakovic was named honorable mention All-ACC in Cal’s first season in its new league before transferring to Illinois, where he averaged 13.5 points to help the Illini advance to the Final Four.

Standout performance: Determined to keep the Bears’ season going, Stojakovic was an aggressive offensive force in the ACC tournament. He scored 29 points in an overtime victory over Virginia Tech in the first round, then posted a career-high 37 on 13-for-22 shooting in the Bears’ 78-73 loss to his old school, Stanford. His point total was the most in an ACC tournament game since 2013 and the most by a Cal player since Charlie Moore scored 38 against UC Irvine on Nov. 16, 2016.

Impact on his team: The Bears, without a winning season since 2017, were 12-11 after a 74-62 win over NC State. Stojakovic averaged 17.2 points the rest of the way but Cal went 2-8 in those games and finished the season at 14-19 and 6-14 in ACC play.

Previously on our list:

No. 19: Jackson Sirmon

No. 20: Ray Green

No. 21: Marta Suarez

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