St. John's, Rick Pitino land commitment from UMass transfer RJ Luis

UMass transfer RJ Luis has committed to St. John’s, he told On3.

“I believe Coach Pitino and St. John’s is the right fit for me,” he said. “I want to be apart of something special and I believe Coach Pitino is the one that can get it done. He’s a legendary coach with a lot of winning history and success developing players. The storm is coming.”

The 6-foot-7, 195-pound freshman shooting guard averaged 11.5 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 1.3 assists this season as a freshman for the Minuteman. He also shot 45.5 percent from the field and 34.8 percent from three.

Luis chose the Red Storm over Louisville and Texas A&M.

The Miami native is now headed to Queens to finish out his college career. The Red Storm finished the the 2022-23 season eighth in the Big East with an overall record of 18-15. St. John’s fired Mike Anderson at the end of the season, and have since hired Hall-of-Fame coach Rick Pitino to revitalize the program.

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

RJ Luis is headed to Queens, 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.