Greg Gantt enters the transfer portal
For the second time in his career, forward Greg Gantt has entered the NCAA transfer portal. The NC State basketball redshirt junior forward made his move Wednesday morning March 29.
The Fayetteville, N.C., native began his career at Providence College, where he played for two seasons before deciding to transfer. Gantt picked NC State, but he redshirted his first season in Raleigh due to a sports hernia injury.
Gantt made his debut this year for the Wolfpack. He started 17 of 22 games he played, carving out a role as an energetic rebounder and defender. Gantt averaged 2.0 points and 4.5 rebounds per contest. He had season-highs of 7 points in an overtime home win over Final Four-bound Miami and 10 rebounds in a road win at Wake Forest.
Gantt joins fifth-year senior forward Jack Clark and junior center Ebenezer Dowuona from the NC State roster in hopping into the transfer portal. In addition, sophomore guard Terquavion Smith has declared for the NBA Draft.
NC State is also losing guard Jarkel Joiner, who exhausted his eligibility. Wolfpack forward Dusan Mahorcic is expected to try for a waiver for an extra year, but if denied is also out of eligibility.
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.
