Former Michigan guard Zeb Jackson announces transfer destination
Former Michigan guard Zeb Jackson entered the transfer portal a few months ago in the middle of the 2021-2022 college basketball season. This weekend, he announced his new transfer destination. The former top 100 overall prospect announced in a Twitter graphic from On3’s Joe Tipton on Saturday that he’ll be playing his college basketball next season for the VCU Rams in Richmond, Virginia. Jackson only played in four games this season for the Michigan Wolverines. He also missed several games due to a non-Covid-19 related illness, but even when he was healthy he had trouble carving out consistent minutes in the Wolverines’ rotation.
Check out the graphic that Jackson posted on his Twitter page with the announcement.
Michigan will be losing two more guards at the end of this season, DeVante’ Jones and Eli Brooks. The Wolverines’ lone guard coming in for next season is Dug McDaniel, so Michigan head coach Juwan Howard will likely be looking to the transfer portal to bring in more guards for his team.
In high school, Jackson spent his first three years of high school basketball at Maumee Valley Country Day (Toledo, Ohio), but transferred to Montverde for his senior season. While at Montverde, he helped guide the team to a 25-0 overall record and a No.1 overall prep ranking before the season was cancelled due to Covid-19. Montverde was declared the high school national champions that season. Jackson scored 1,605 points during his high school career, averaging 25.4 points, 7.6 rebounds, 3.4 assists, and 3.7 steals per game. According to the On3 Consensus Rankings for the 2020 cycle, Jackson was rated as the No. 61 overall prospect in America and he earned a four-star rating, according to the same rankings.
Jackson is a very promising prospect with a lot of potential, so it will be interesting to see how he performs given a new change of scenery in college basketball.
For all the latest information and updates on where college basketball prospects are headed this offseason, keep it locked to the 2022 On3 Transfer Portal Wire.
More 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.
On3’s Barkley Truax also contributed to this article.