Tennessee Volunteers center Handje Tamba enters transfer portal

The Tennessee Volunteers men’s basketball team we’ll be without the services of big man Handje Tamba. On Tuesday, the seven-foot freshman from Knoxville, Tennessee, announced that he would be entering the transfer portal.

Tamba was originally a recruit from the 2022 class but elected to reclassify for the 2021 class and head to college a year early. Unfortunately for him, the seven-footer did not crack Tennessee’s rotation this year and did not register a single minute of game-time action.

Tamba was a three-star prospect in his recruiting class but had offers from big-name programs, including the likes of SEC rival the Auburn Tigers and the Georgetown Hoyas of the Big East. And now that he has entered the transfer portal, he has the opportunity to join one of those programs and possibly beat up on his home state team next season.

He has yet to be ranked in On3’s transfer player rankings.

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.