Basketball portal closed, what's next for West Virginia?
The transfer portal window for college basketball has now closed. But what does that mean?
Well, essentially all undergraduate students that haven’t already informed compliance that they wanted to enter the transfer portal can no longer do so without needing a waiver in order to suit up immediately at their next location.
Yes, you will see some names enter over the next couple days but those are from players that had already indicated to their schools they intended to do so.
Once that process occurs, schools have a 48-hour grace period in order to actually submit the names into the transfer database which at times can go even longer when you throw weekends into the mix.
The confusion for most comes in the sense that while the window to enter the portal is indeed shut, that doesn’t prevent the ongoing recruitment of those that are already in the database. That means that visits and everything else will continue as scheduled in order for teams to round out their rosters.
No, there won’t be anymore players thrown into the pool to select from but those already in there will still be able to sort through their options to find their next landing spot.
Keep in mind that is only the case for those players that are undergraduate students as those that have already graduated from their institutions can enter into the transfer portal at any time. So, as you can see it’s easy to see how there is so much confusion over the windows and how they actually work.
At West Virginia, only three players elected to enter into the transfer portal thus far and two of those were on scholarship in center Jimmy Bell (Mississippi State) and forward Jamel King (Kennesaw State). The other entry was walk-on point guard Josiah Davis who signed with Tennessee Tech.
However, on the other side of the coin the program has been highly active securing signatures from Arizona point guard Kerr Kriisa, Syracuse center Jesse Edwards, Montana State guard RaeQuan Battle and Manhattan guard Omar Silverio. And the program might not be done just yet, despite the fact that the program is currently full-on scholarships with 13 players signed for next season.
Granted the use of name, image and likeness funds can help to bridge that gap in some cases while there could still be movement from any potential graduates on the roster if they elect to do so.
But the Mountaineers aren’t quite done yet despite the fact that the portal is now technically closed. West Virginia is expected to remain on their toes in order to fill out the best roster possible so you can expect the program to try to identify the players that they believe can help them both this year and in the future.
Window closed or not.
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