Will Shaver decommits from Belmont after April commitment

Former North Carolina C Will Shaver has decommitted from Belmont after transferring there in April, he announced on Twitter.

“Thank you to the Belmont staff for your recruitment and the love yall showed me,” Shaver wrote on social media. “However, After talks with my parents and careful consideration myself I have decided to re-open my recruitment and de-commit from Belmont.”

Shaver redshirted his first season in 2021-22 and went on to only appear in three games for six total minutes this season as a redshirt freshman after coming out of high school as a four-star prospect.

He is originally from Birmingham, AL, and played high school ball at Oak Mountain, where On3’s Industry Rankings, a proprietary algorithm that compiles ratings and rankings from all four primary recruiting media services, had him rated as the No. 110 player and No. 17 center in the 2021 class.

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.