Wisconsin forward announces decision to enter NCAA transfer portal

Wisconsin Badgers forward Ben Carlson has entered the transfer portal, he announced Wednesday via Twitter. He spent the past two seasons with Wisconsin in a reserve role.

This past season, Carlson played in 32 games and made two starts for the Badgers. Overall, he averaged 1.6 points and two rebounds in 9.1 minutes per game. His best performance came in a Jan. 27 game against Nebraska in which he finished with six points and five rebounds across 22 minutes.

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— Ben Carlson (@ben_carlson20) March 30, 2022

“I would like to thank the University of Wisconsin coaching staff for giving me a great opportunity to play basketball in Madison for the past two years, all of my teammates for supporting me both on and off the court, and the Madison community as a whole,” Carlson wrote in a statement. “With that being said, I have decided to enter my name in the transfer portal, and I am excited for what is to come next.”

The 6-foot-9 Carlson was a four-star recruit and the No. 9 overall power forward in the class of 2020 according to On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average. A Minnesota native, he chose Wisconsin over offers from Stanford, Ohio State, Minnesota and many others out of high school.

Wisconsin received a three seed in the NCAA Tournament this past season but ended up losing in the second round to 11-seeded Iowa State. Carlson played 12 minutes in that game and finished with two points.

Transfer portal background information for Wisconsin forward Ben Carlson

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.