Key South Carolina guard enters NCAA Transfer Portal

South Carolina took a huge hit Friday as its leading scorer entered the transfer portal.

Guard Jermaine Couisnard is in the portal, On3’s Matt Zenitz has learned. He played in 26 games — including 16 starts — and averaged 12.6 points per game. He also dished 3.2 assists per contest.

It’s a tough loss for incoming coach Lamont Paris, who’s taking over for Frank Martin in Columbia. Couisnard had some big games this year, including a 33-point outburst in South Carolina’s 77-75 win over LSU on Feb. 19.

Out of high school, Couisnard had plenty of interest, including Illinois, Louisville and Virginia Tech. He also held on offer from UMass, which is reportedly gearing up to hire Martin to replace Matt McCall.

South Carolina is coming off an 18-13 overall record in 2021-22, including 9-9 in SEC action. The Gamecocks introduced Paris as their head coach this week to replace Martin.

Check out On3’s Transfer Portal Rankings here.

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.