LSU to host Louisville women's basketball transfer Hailey Van Lith for official visit

LSU will have a highly touted transfer on campus Tuesday. Former Louisville star Hailey Van Lith is visiting the Tigers Tuesday, On3 and The Bengal Tiger’s Shea Dixon reported.

Van Lith entered the transfer portal April 8, On3’s Jamie Shaw reported, following an impressive career at Louisville. She made back-to-back All-ACC teams and put up big numbers in 2022-23 with 19.7 points, 4.5 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game for the Cardinals. Louisville advanced to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament, falling to Iowa.

Van Lith is also making a name for herself in the NIL space with her On3 NIL Valuation. She has an NIL Valuation of $518K, which puts her at No. 91 in the On3 NIL 100.

“Hailey Van Lith has established herself as a star in NIL over the last 21 months,” On3 sports business reporter Pete Nakos said. “She’s carefully crafted her brand, with her most noteworthy deals so far easily being adidas and Dick’s Sporting Goods. It will be interesting to watch if her partnership with the sportswear brand makes any impact on where she decides to transfer. Louisville was an adidas school.”

The On3 NIL Valuation is the industry’s leading index that sets the standard market NIL value for high school and college athletes. The On3 NIL Valuation calculates the optimized NIL opportunity for athletes relative to the overall NIL market and projects out to as long as 12 months into the future.

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.