Oklahoma guard Grant Sherfield receives decision from NCAA on transfer

Oklahoma Sooners’ guard Grant Sherfield has been awaiting news from the NCAA on his status for the upcoming 2022-2023 college basketball season. On Wednesday evening, he received the news he was hoping for. Sherfield was granted a waiver from the NCAA and is officially eligible for the upcoming season to play for the Sooners. He’s a two-time transfer that previously played for the Nevada Wolfpack and the Wichita State Shockers, so he needed to apply to the NCAA for the waiver. In On3’s 2022 Transfer Portal prospect rankings, he was ranked as the No. 17 overall prospect in the transfer portal this year.

Last season at Nevada, Sherfield averaged 19.1 points and 6.4 rebounds per game, while shooting 43.5 percent from the floor. He posted 13 20-point performances last year and there’s no question he’ll provide a massive boost to the Sooners’ scoring. Sherfield briefly flirted with the idea of staying in the 2022 NBA Draft before ultimately deciding to withdraw and play college basketball next season in Norman. He played in 30 games as a freshman for the Wichita State Shockers.

Sherfield will look to team up with former George Washington transfer Joe Bamisile, who is still waiting on his transfer waiver from the NCAA.

The 6-foot-4, 195-pound guard began his college career at Virginia Tech in 2020 as the No. 25 ranked point guard in the class according to On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average. He appeared in 13 games for the Hokies, averaging 3.5 points before transferring to George Washington in the offseason.

This past year with the Colonials, Bamisile started 29 games to finish second on the team in scoring with 16.3 points per game while shooting 35.1% from 3-point range. He was named third-team All-Atlantic 10 for his efforts, as he ranked fourth among all conference players in scoring.

NCAA 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 came 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 Chandler Vessels also contributed to this article.