Pittsburgh starting guard Femi Odukale officially enters NCAA Transfer Portal

Pittsburgh is losing one of its key guards to the transfer portal.

Panthers guard Femi Odukale entered the portal Friday, On3’s Matt Zenitz has learned. In 31 appearances, including 28 starts, averaged 10.8 points in 32.4 minutes per game for Pittsburgh this season as the Panthers went 11-21 overall and 6-14 in ACC action.

It was Odukale’s second season in Pittsburgh. As a freshman in 2020-21, he averaged 6.6 points and 2.5 rebounds in 20.4 minutes per game.

As a Class of 2020 recruit, Odukale generated plenty of interest on the recruiting trial. He received offers from Virginia Tech, Seton Hall, UMass and New Mexico, among other programs.

Pitt finished tied for 11th place in the ACC standings. They ended up as the No. 12 seed in the conference tournament and fell to Boston College 66-46 in the first round.

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.