Report: Gonzaga guard Michael Ajayi plans to enter NCAA Transfer Portal

Gonzaga guard Michael Ajayi plans to enter the NCAA Transfer Portal, per ESPN’s Jonathan Givony. On3 can now confirm he is in the portal. Ajayi only spent one season at Gonzaga after transferring this past offseason from Pepperdine.

Ajayi played in all 34 of Gonzaga’s games and made 13 starts. He averaged 6.5 points and 5.4 rebounds in 18.9 minutes per game while shooting 44.6% from the field and 18.2% from beyond the arc.

Ajayi’s statistics were down significantly from his debut season at Pepperdine, where he averaged a conference-high 17.2 points and 9.9 rebounds per game. Additionally, Ajayi was extremely efficient, shooting 46.7% from the field and 47.0% from beyond the arc on 2.5 attempts per game.

Ajayi had his best showing of this season in Gonzaga’s 105-62 blowout win over Portland. In the victory, the 6-foot-7 guard tallied 20 points and eight rebounds on 7-10 shooting from the floor. While Ajayi first gained nationwide attention at Pepperdine, it isn’t where his career began. Ajayi played his first two collegiate seasons at Pierce Community College in Washington.

He averaged a double-double at Pierce and was named the Northwest Athletic Conference West Region’s Most Valuable Player and the West Region’s Freshman of the Year. Alas, he still wasn’t hearing from any Division I program.

That all changed when Ajayi happened to play against former NBA All-Star Isaiah Thomas at a local gym. Thomas was impressed by Ajayi and connected him with then-Pepperdine head coach Lorenzo Romar. Romar had been Thomas’ head coach at Washington.

Ajayi played high school basketball at Kentwood (WA), where he was an unranked prospect, according to the On3 Industry Ranking, a weighted average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies. Ajayi was a late bloomer and didn’t make the varsity team at Kentwood until his season year.

Now, Ajayi will look to take another step forward in his career. Gonzaga finished this season with a 26-9 overall record and a 14-4 mark in conference play. The Bulldogs also won their fifth WCC Tournament championship in the past six seasons.

Gonzaga handily defeated 8-seed Georgia, 89-68 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament but wasn’t able to keep its momentum rolling and ultimately fell 81-76 to 1-seed Houston in the Round of 32. After the game, Gonzaga head coach Mark Few reflected on the Bulldogs’ season.

“We fought back from where we were maybe in mid-January to now or even after we took some tough losses in the nonconference portion of our schedule,” Few said. “They never had a bad practice. They kept their heads high, and they just kept — they stayed together and kept battling and learning. We got so much better.”