Top-ranked junior college forward announces transfer destination
The Missouri Tigers landed a big-time transfer portal prospect from the junior college ranks on Friday afternoon. In a graphic he posted on Twitter, Mohamed Diarra officially committed to the Missouri Tigers. The 6-foot-10, 215 pound forward is originally a native of Paris, France, but has been playing in the United States the past few seasons at Garden City Community College (Garden City, Kansas).
Diarra chose Missouri over several other programs he’d received interest from including: Pittsburgh, Maryland, Marquette, West Virginia, and others. The commitment from the JUCO forward is the first commitment for the Tigers’ new head coach, Dennis Gates. It’s a big one, too, as Diarra averaged 17.8 points per game and 12.6 rebounds per game as a sophomore at Garden City Community College.
He’s got a nice shot from three-point range and has above average dribbling ability for a player his size at 6-foot-10. If you want to check out his junior college highlight tape, you can watch that here. Diarra blocked 71 shots this season, shot 45 percent from the floor, including 30 percent from three-point range, and 71 percent from the free-throw line. After taking a quick look at his tantalizing skill set, it’s easy to see why he was the most heavily recruited JUCO prospect in America. Jucorecruiting.com ranked Diarra as the No.1 junior college prospect in America for the 2022 class.
He will have four seasons to play at Missouri because the 2020-2021 season did not count toward eligibility for junior college players due to COVID-19.
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.