Illinois guard Jayden Epps plans to enter NCAA transfer portal

Illinois guard Jayden Epps plans to enter the transfer portal, according to On3’s Joe Tipton. He was a freshman for the Fighting Illini this past season and has three years of eligibility remaining.

A Norfolk, Virginia native, Epps played his final year of high school at Combine Academy in North Carolina, where he was a four-star prospect. He ranked as the No. 81 overall recruit and No. 12 combo guard in the 2022 class according to On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.

Jayden Epps immediately made an impact at Illinois, averaging 9.5 points and 1.5 assists in 24.6 minutes per game. He started the final 10 games of the regular season for the Fighting Illini and reached double figures in scoring in eight of those contests.

Illinois is coming off of a 20-13 season that earned it a No. 9 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

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.