Memphis lands former McDonald’s All-American center Jordan Brown from transfer portal

Former McDonald’s All-American and two-time All-Sun Belt center Jordan Brown has committed to Memphis, per Jon Rothstein. He will use his final season of eligibility with the Tigers after making previous stops at Nevada, Arizona and Louisiana.

The 6-foot-10 big man averaged 19.3 points, 8.6 rebounds and 1.2 blocks in a career-best season last year.

Originally a highly-touted recruit out of California in 2018, Brown started his college career under Eric Musselman at Nevada before making the jump to the high-major level. He sat out under transfer rules of the time before winning the Pac-12 6th Man of the Year award in 2020-21.

Two All-Sun Belt seasons at Louisiana made him one of the top names to hit the transfer portal this offseason. He currently ranks as the No. 13 overall player and the No. 2 available player – behind only Grant Nelson, who reportedly plans to commit at Alabama – according to the On3 Transfer Portal Rankings.

Jordan Brown joins a group of incoming transfers at Memphis which includes former Florida State guard Caleb Mills, former St. John’s forward David Jones and former MTSU forward Teafale Lenard.

Former UCF guard Jayhlon Young, former Temple forward Nick Jourdain and Division II standout Jonathan Pierre also join the Tigers.

Notably, with so many incoming transfers, Memphis is only guaranteed to return walk-on guard Jayden Hardaway from the 2022-23 roster. However, veteran forward DeAndre Williams is reportedly exploring his options play an additional year under an NCAA waiver.

Penny Hardaway’s 2023 recruiting class features guard Mikey Williams, forward JJ Taylor, his son Ashton Hardaway and forward Carl Cherenfant.

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.

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.