Tennessee guard BJ Edwards enters NCAA Transfer Portal

Tennessee guard BJ Edwards has entered the Transfer Portal, according to On3’s Jamie Shaw. He spent just one year in Knoxville and only appeared in 14 games as a freshman in 2022-23. With last year’s starters, Santiago Vescovi and Zakai Zeigler, set to return for 2023-24, along with some transfer additions, the pathway to more minutes in the Volunteer background was rocky at best. Thus, Edwards will look for a better opportunity elsewhere.

The hometown kid played for Knoxville Catholic in high school, where he was rated as a four-star recruit in the 2022 class by the On3 Industry Rankings. Edwards was also ranked as the No. 96 overall player and No. 3 prospect out of Tennessee for his cycle. He’ll get plenty of looks now that he’s on the market and so late in the window.

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.