Jordan Mathews transfer: Early rumblings say Zags are the team to beat

The California Golden Bears took a big hit when soon to be senior guard Jordan Mathews announced he is graduating and transferring this year.

Mathews, a 6'3 guard, has averaged a shade over 13 points per game his past two seasons at Cal. He also is a legitimate three-point threat that has averaged 41.7 percent from beyond the arc over his college career.

And it also looks like the Zags might be landing yet another talented transfer to add to a rather talented squad, if the early rumblings from the college basketball Twitter world are to be taken seriously.

Obviously, it is quite early in this whole process. But Gonzaga makes sense as a fit for Mathews. The Zags have one remaining scholarship on a roster that could be primed to make a deep run into the 2017 NCAA Tournament.

Students graduate and transfer because they don't have to sit out a year and they want their last year to count. Cal was still going to be pretty damn good next year, so realistically, Mathews wants to find a team that is going to be that much better.

He should also be able to find plenty of minutes on the squad. The backcourt is cemented with Nigel Williams-Goss, Silas Melson, and Josh Perkins as the main contributors, but as we saw last year, the Zags needed a bit more help and never had anyone to step in. Mathews should be able to give the Zags more freedom to let the players develop as they need to, rather than just throwing raw meat into the hyena den.

At the same time, the Zags have a crowded backcourt. Between Williams-Goss, Melson, Perkins, Zach Norvell, and Bryan Alberts, that is a lot of players for potentially not a lot of minutes.

In other words, be ready to see Gonzaga announce a new player to the roster, but also be ready to see Mathews go to someone else.