Jose Perez plans to return to West Virginia for final season

West Virginia forward Jose Perez plans to use his additional year of college basketball eligibility to play for the Mountaineers, he told college basketball insider Adam Zagoria on Friday afternoon. In the 2022-2023 college basketball season, Perez had his appeal to play denied by the NCAA.

He transferred to West Virginia from Manhattan last October, after Jaspers’ head coach Steve Masiello was fired on October 25th, 2022. That forced Perez to look for a new home via the transfer portal and he eventually settled on West Virginia. However, the NCAA denied his request for a waiver to play college basketball immediately. He’ll finally get to play during the 2023-2024 season.

He has averaged 15.1 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 3.5 assists in four seasons. Perez was coming off a career-best 18.9 points per game with Manhattan two seasons ago and was looking to improve this season with WVU.

The gifted small forward was also named the MAAC Preseason Player of the Year. College basketball fans across the country will finally get to watch one of the nation’s best players suit up this fall. This will be his fourth school of his college basketball career.

Perez played for Gardner-Webb from 2018-2020, then for Marquette from 2020-2021, then the 2021-2022 season with the Manhattan Jaspers.

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.

On3’s Griffin McVeigh also contributed to this article.