Kentucky forward Ajae Petty enters the transfer potal

Afte firing Kyra Elzy on Monday, Kentucky has lost their first player to the transfer portal.

Per On3’s Pete Nakos, Ajae Petty has entered her name into the portal.

Kentucky women's basketball forward Ajae Petty has entered the transfer portal, @On3sports has learned.

The grad transfer averaged 14.2 points and 10.6 rebounds per game this season. Former LSU transfer. https://t.co/w5eeF1YMNM pic.twitter.com/cDm8D3iBug

— Pete Nakos (@PeteNakos_) March 12, 2024

Petty played the past two seasons for the Wildcats after starting her career at LSU. She left Baton Rouge after Kim Mulkey’s first season there and chose to play for Elzy and UK.

In her career, Petty has appeared in 92 games with this past season being her first as a full-time starter. In those outings, she has averaged 7.2 points and 5.7 rebounds while shooting 51.7% from the field.

This year, her senior season, in Lexington was Petty’s best of her time in college. She posted career-bests at 14.2 points, 10.6 rebounds, and 1.3 steals on 50.7% shooting in over 31 minutes per game. That was good to make her the team leader in scoring, rebounding, field-goal percentage, and blocks at 0.8.

AD Mitch Barnhart elected to move on from Elzy to start this week after four seasons. Elzy took over as interim for Matthew Mitchell upon his sudden retirement and then became the full-time head coach before the end of the season.

Besides a miraculous win of the SEC Tournament in 2022, UK had little to show from Elzy’s tenure. They went 61-60 (.504) overall and 23-40 (0.369) in conference play in that span. However, the past two seasons were particularly rough with a record of 24-39. That was good for no better than 13th in the conference last season and 12th this season.

Kentucky is already beginning to start their search for Elzy’s successor. Now, with Petty’s decision, it appears that they’ll have to do some roster construction as well depending on who else may elect to leave following yesterday’s news.

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 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.