Texas A&M guard Marcus Williams enters NCAA Transfer Portal

One of Texas A&M’s starting guards is in the transfer portal.

Marcus Williams entered the portal Tuesday, On3’s Matt Zenitz has learned. Williams started 25 of 27 games for the Aggies this season and averaged 7.9 points per contest.

He arrived in College Station this season after starting his career at Wyoming. Williams started 49 of 52 games over his career, but saw his scoring drop from 14.8 points per game in 2020-21 at Wyoming to 7.9 points per game this past season at Texas A&M.

Williams hadn’t played since Feb. 19 against Vanderbilt after taking a “leave of absence” from the program, head coach Buzz Williams told reporters. He made it clear it wasn’t a punishment, though.

The Aggies went 27-13 overall and 9-9 in SEC play this year, but didn’t make it to the NCAA Tournament. They were one of the last four out of the field, therefore becoming a No. 1 seed in the NIT. Texas A&M advanced to the NIT title game, where it fell to Xavier at Madison Square Garden.

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.