Florida guard Niels Lane will be entering the NCAA Transfer Portal
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The day after Florida’s 67-49 loss to UCF in the NIT, the Gators men’s basketball team lost a pair of players from their 2022-2023 roster.
Shortly after news broke Thursday about Kowacie Reeves is leaving the program, it was reported that Niels Lane will be entering the portal. Gators Online has confirmed that both players plan to transfer.
Lane is on the move following three years at UF. After appearing in 21 games last season with three starts, averaging 15.2 minutes per game, his playing time dropped this past year.
Niels Lane played in 14 of Florida’s 33 games in 2022-23, seeing the floor just 8.7 minutes per game. He averaged 2.4 points and shot 43.8 percent from the field.
His best game came against Kentucky, when he logged season highs in minutes played (23) and points scored (8). Lane also had 6 points in 16 minutes against UCF and FAMU.
With Lane and Reeves entering the portal, the Gators (for now) will return six scholarship players in Denzel Aberdeen, Trey Bonham, Alex Fudge, Riley Kugel, Will Richard and Aleks Szymczyk.
Colin Castleton, Myreon Jones and Kyle Lofton have exhausted their college eligibility, while CJ Felder and Jason Jitoboh still have their COVID year remaining to play at UF or elsewhere.
What Gators fans needs to know about the 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.
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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. 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 transfer 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.
