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:
38. Jake Howerton
Sport:
Arrival year at Cal: 2022
Previous school: Pepperdine (Played the 2020 and ’21 seasons with the Waves, scoring 54 goals, including 40 as a sophomore. He scored five goals on Oct. 3, 2021, leading Pepperdine to a 16-14 upset over No. 2 Cal, which went on to win the NCAA title).
Contributions at Cal:
— A 6-foot-5, 230-pound attacker, originally from Cardiff, Calif., ranked fifth on the team as a sophomore in 2022, scoring 28 goals, including four hat tricks. He scored twice and had three assists in a win over Navy for a season-high five points. Also had 10 assists and 11 steals for a Cal team that beat USC 13-12 in the NCAA title game to finish 23-2.
— He scored 38 goals to go with 25 steals and 11 assists as the Bears went 24-5 and won their third straight NCAA title with a 13-11 victory over UCLA in the 2023 championship match.
— Howerton scored eight goals at the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championship tournament, including four goals in a 15-14 overtime win over No. 4 Stanford in the semifinals. He was named to the 2023 NCAA Championship second team, the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation all-tournament team, and he All-MPSF second team.
— He scored 24 goals as a senior on team that finished the season with a 12-13 record.
Standout performance: Howerton delivered when the Bears needed him most in the semifinals of the 1012 NCAA tournament against No. 1 USC. The Trojans ganged up defensively on Nikolaos Papanikolaou, holding Cal star scoreless, but Howerton responded with four goals in a 10-9 victory that sent the Bears into the title game.
Impact on his team: Howerton spent three seasons at Cal, scoring 90 goals on teams that were 59-20 and won two national championships.
Previously on our list:
No. 39: Luc Bequette
No. 40: Caisa-Marie Lindfors
No. 41: Kendrick Raphael
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