Former Illinois guard Skyy Clark to visit Louisville this week, has been contacted by Arkansas

Illinois guard Skyy Clark is in the Transfer Portal and already has a visit in place. According to On3’s Joe Tipton, Clark will visit the Louisville Cardinals this week. Here was that report, which Tipton posted to Twitter:

“Illinois transfer Skyy Clark will visit Louisville this week, he tells @On3sports. The proposed visit is for Thursday, however, could come sooner.”

Tipton also added in another tweet that Arkansas has reached out to the former top-40 recruit and the Razorbacks could compete to land Clark.

“Arkansas has reached out to Skyy Clark, he tells @On3sports,” added Tipton.

Clark spent just one year in Champaign and actually left the team for personal reasons back in January. Now, he’s in the portal and looking at the Cardinals. Clark is no stranger to the Bluegrass as he was once committed to Kentucky back in 2020 where now-Louisville coach Kenny Payne was the head recruiter for most of Clark’s recruitment, but did leave for the Knicks before he ultimately committed to Kentucky.

Of course, Clark de-committed from Kentucky and ended up at Illinois. Perhaps a move to the other major hoops program in the state of Kentucky is in the Cards (pun intended).

To keep up with the latest players on the move, check out On3’s Transfer Portal wire. 

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.