Will Kim Mulkey target elite transfer Hailey Van Lith?

Louisville star Hailey Van Lith entered the Transfer Portal over the weekend after turning in a huge junior season at Louisville.

For LSU fans, the question was immediately asked.

Will the Tigers push to add Van Lith to next year’s roster?

LSU won the National Championship over Iowa, giving head coach Kim Mulkey a National Championship in just her second season with the program.

The transfer portal was a key piece to LSU’s success this past season, and while Mulkey signed the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class, the Tigers will certainly get involved in the portal this offseason.

Will Van Lith be a target in the opening stages of the offseason?

Van Lith has a connection to Mulkey

As a junior this past season, Van Lith averaged 19.7 points, 4.5 rebounds and 3.2 assists. That resulted in All-ACC honors for the second straight season.

Van Lith led Louisville in scoring each of the last two seasons, with the team’s season coming to an end in an Elite 8 loss to Caitlin Clark and Iowa.

With two years of eligibility remaining, Van Lith is one of the top names to hit the portal.

For Mulkey, there’s already a familiarity built in.

Van Lith left high school in the 2020 class as the No. 7 prospect on HoopGurlz.

In the same class, LSU’s Angel Reese, Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, UCONN’s Paige Bueckers and Stanford’s Cameron Brink were among the other prospects ranked inside the Top 10.

Mulkey and Baylor signed a pair of Top 20 prospects in the 2020 cycle, but the Bears fell just short of landing Van Lith. In the race for her commitment, Van Lith was down to just two teams – and one was coached by Mulkey.

Given Mulkey is coming off another national title, and knows Van Lith and her family from recruiting, there’s little doubt the Tigers would have interest.

It’s worth noting that while Van Lith entered the portal, she also included a “no-contact” clause. That means Van Lith can reach out to coaches, but coaches can’t initiate the contact.

It could mean Van Lith simply wants to take control of evaluating her next step, or perhaps her decision has already been made. 48 hours after entering the portal, Van Lith has remained mum on her next step.

Could NIL be a factor in Van Lith’s decision?

In this past week’s update to the On3 NIL Women’s Top 100, LSU had both Angel Reese and Flau’jae Johnson check into the Top 10. Coming off a National Championship win and a busy week with television and NIL deal appearances, both are expected to continue to rise in Tuesday’s update to the NIL Top 100.

Van Lith isn’t far behind, also checking into the On3 NIL Women’s Top 100 as the No. 10 player on the list with an On3 NIL valuation of $511,000.

The valuation also makes On3’s NIL 100, which includes both men’s and women’s sports.

“Hailey Van Lith has established herself as a star in NIL over the last 21 months,” said On3 College Sports Business Reporter Pete Nakos. “She’s carefully crafted her brand, with her most noteworthy deals so far easily being adidas and Dick’s Sporting Goods. It will be interesting to watch if her partnership with the sportswear brand makes any impact on where she decides to transfer. Louisville was an adidas school.”

While Van Lith has an NIL shoe deal with adidas, it’s worth noting LSU – a Nike school – has a star freshman in Johnson who has an NIL deal with Puma.

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.