Alabama shows interest in West Virginia transfer Joe Toussaint

Alabama basketball received bad news in bombshell fashion over the weekend when extremely veteran guard Jahvon Quinerly announced he would leave the program as a graduate transfer to find a new home ahead of his sixth and final season of college ball.

According to On3’s Joe Tipton, ‘Bama is courting former Iowa and West Virginia guard Joe Toussaint. At least, that’s what Toussaint told Tipton, who tweeted the following report on Monday morning: “Alabama is the latest school to give West Virginia Joe Toussaint a call, he tells me.”

The news came as a shock, since Quinerly had just announced roughly a month ago that he was pulling out of the NBA Draft to return to the Crimson Tide. Now, he’ll hit the market and likely find another tremendous program to play for in his (checks notes) age 25 season. Yeah, he’s an old man swimming in the kiddie pool at this point. But so is Joe Toussaint, one of the West Virginia defects who the Tide are apparently now in on following the Quinerly departure.

For folks out of the loop on who Joe Toussaint is: he’s a six-foot point guard who began his career as an Iowa backup before becoming a top-five scorer on a solid West Virginia team last season. He averaged just over nine points and two assists a game with the Mountaineers, but the important development, in the eyes of Nate Oats, was his three point shooting, where he experienced a big uptick in volume and accuracy last season.

He makes for a great third guard alongside Aaron Estrada and Mark Sears and could even shoulder some of the true point guard responsibilities if Sears wants or needs to take on a much larger scoring role in 2023-24. Regardless, he’d be a real solid late-offseason addition for last season’s No. 1 overall seed.

To keep up with the latest players on the move, check out On3’s Transfer Portal wire.

Transfer portal background information

The NCAA Transfer Portal, which covers every NCAA sport at the Division I, II and III levels, is a private database with names of student-athletes who wish to transfer. It is not accessible to the public.

The process of entering the portal is done through a school’s compliance office. Once a player provides written notification of an intent to transfer, the office enters the player’s name in the database and everything is off and running. The compliance office has 48 hours to comply with the player’s request and that request cannot be refused.

Once a player’s name like Paul Mulcahy shows up in the portal, other schools can contact the player. Players can change their minds at any point and withdraw from the portal. However, once a player enters the portal, the current scholarship no longer has to be honored. In other words, if a player enters the portal but decides to stay, the school is not obligated to provide a scholarship anymore.

The database is a normal database, sortable by a variety of topics, including (of course) sport and name. A player’s individual entry includes basic details such as contact info, whether the player was on scholarship and whether the player is transferring as a graduate student.

A player can ask that a “do not contact” tag be placed on the report. In those instances, the players don’t want to be contacted by schools unless they’ve initiated the communication.

The portal has been around since Oct. 15, 2018 and the new calendar cycle within the portal begins each August. For example, the 2021-22 cycle started Aug. 1. During the 2020-21 cycle, 2,626 FBS football players entered the transfer portal (including walk-ons). That comes after 1,681 entered during the 2019-20 cycle and 1,709 during the abbreviated 2018-19 cycle. In comparison, 1,833 Division I basketball players entered the portal during the 2020-21 cycle after totals of 1,020 in 2019-20 and 1,063 in 2018-19.