Texas A&M basketball guard Hassan Diarra entering transfer portal

Texas A&M is losing one of their guards to the transfer portal. On Thursday, Hassan Diarra decided to test the waters elsewhere, according to On3’s Matt Zenitz.

“Texas A&M basketball guard Hassan Diarra has entered the transfer portal, @On3sports has learned,” tweeted Zenitz. “Former top-100 recruit who averaged 6.2 points per game this past season.”

Coming out of the Putnam Science Academy in Putnam, Connecticut, Diarra was a four-star recruit, according to the On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average. Additionally, Diarra was the No. 1 recruit out of Connecticut in 2020, as well as the No. 11 point guard and No. 51 prospect overall in the nation, per On3 Consensus.

Among other available point guards, Diarra projects as one of the top available transfers. His On3 Consensus rating would put him at No. 3 among point guards who have decided to enter the transfer portal this offseason.

Last season, Hassan Diarra averaged 6.2 points, 1.4 assists and 1.8 rebounds over 15.4 minutes for Texas A&M. Evidently, the former highly-rated point guard will be looking for more opportunities at his next stop.

More on Hassan Diarra, transfer portal

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.