On Wednesday, the NCAA voted to allow immediate eligibility for all men’s and women’s basketball transfers for the 2020-21 season. This means Cal guard Jarred Hyder, who transferred to Cal after playing his freshman year at Fresno State, is eligible to play this season. In this article, we’ll take a look at three ways the eligibility of Hyder can be expected to help the Bears.
#1. Point guard depth: The first thing that Hyder can be expected to bring is depth at the point guard position. At the moment, sophomore Joel Brown (3.7 points, 3.3 assists, and 2.0 steals) and grad transfer Makale Foreman (8.0 points, 2.9 assists, and 1.0 steals) are the two guards manning the point guard position. Brown isn’t quite ready to be a full-time starting point guard and Foreman is much more of a shooting guard trapped in the body of a point guard. At Fresno State, Hyder did a decent job of running the point guard position, averaging 9.1 points and 3.1 assists per game.
#2. A player Matt Bradley can trust: One of the big issues this season has been Matt Bradley lacking some trust in his teammates. At times, Bradley ops to try to make things happen on his own as opposed to looking to get his teammates involved. To a certain extent, it’s hard to blame Bradley considering he’s the only elite player on his team. That said, basketball is a team sport and you need to be able to trust your teammates even if they aren’t up to the level that you would like them to be.
With Hyder now available, the Bears have someone who Bradley can trust. Hyder and Bradley were teammates on Team Eleate during their AAU days in San Bernardino. They both really liked playing with each other and in truth, the presence of Bradley is a major reason for why Hyder chose Cal in the first place.
“I’ve known Matt since middle school, but that’s basically family,” Hyder said of his relationship with Bradley back in the spring. “He’s one of the few people I consider as my actual brother aside from my blood brother. We’ve stayed at each other’s house and things of that nature. We played on Team Eleate together for two years. His last summer there we were pretty much a one-two punch.
“We share the same competitive edge, so we constantly push each other to get better. Besides the great chemistry we have together, we both can score at all three levels, have a high IQ, and we know how to complement each other’s games.”
By having someone else on the floor who Bradley highly trusts, that will help take some of the pressure off Bradley and allow him to play a more relaxed game. He won’t be forcing as many shots and in general, the offense should be much more free flowing.
#3. Scoring: Through seven games, there are two Cal players scoring in double figures on average: Matt Bradley (19.1 points) and Grant Anticevich (10.3). Grad transfers Makale Foreman and Ryan Betley have had their moments, but so far are yet to prove they can be consistent, double figures scorers for this Cal team. By adding Hyder, who was close to a double figures scorer last year with Fresno State, that will allow Cal to not have to rely as much on those guys. In addition, those guys may actually play better because they won’t feel as much pressure. This Cal team needs more scoring and Hyder projects to bring that to the Bears this year.
