Memphis loses guard Tyler Harris to NCAA Transfer Portal

The Memphis Tigers have lost another piece of its basketball team. On3’s Matt Zenitz reported on Saturday morning that veteran Memphis guard Tyler Harris has entered his name into the NCAA Transfer Portal.

This will be the second time that Harris has entered the portal to leave Memphis in his career. He previously entered the portal after the 2019-2020 season and played one season at Iowa State before returning to the Tigers this past season.

This past year, Harris played in 33 games with three starts on a Memphis team that struggled early due to a rash of injuries and other absences. But the Tigers turned it around, and Harris was a key piece of the bench. On the season, he averaged 8.8 points, 1.7 assists, and 1.2 rebounds in 18.8 minutes per game. He shot 40.4% from the field and 39.3% from three-point range, also posting an impressive 89.5% clip from the free throw line.

Harris is the latest talented player to pop up in the transfer portal wire.

Transfer portal background information for Memphis

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.