Kentucky transfer Keion Brooks visiting Arizona

Former Kentucky standout Keion Brooks, Jr. is searching for his new home in the transfer portal this week. He’s visiting the Arizona Wildcats on Thursday, per On3’s Joe Tipton. He spent his first three seasons with the Wildcats. In the 2021-2022 college basketball season, he averaged 10.8 points, 4.4 rebounds, 1.0 assists, and shot 49.1 percent from the field. The former four-star prospect started 42 games at Kentucky.

On3 currently lists Brooks as the No. 40 overall prospect remaining in the transfer portal. Recently, USA Today’s Bryan Kalbrosky learned that the former Kentucky standout had narrowed down his finalists to three schools: Arizona, Notre Dame, and Washington.

In late May, Brooks was flirting with staying in the 2022 NBA Draft, but ultimately opted against it and withdrew his name. With a big season next year, he could be a potential first round pick in the 2023 NBA Draft. According to the On3 Consensus Rankings for the 2019 recruiting class, the 6-7 power forward was rated as the No. 5 small forward in America coming out of the powerhouse program that is La Lumiere School (Fort Wayne, Indiana).

For all the latest on where all the different college basketball prospects across America are headed this offseason, keep it locked to the On3 Transfer Portal Wire.

More information on the NCAA Transfer Portal

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.