Ole Miss basketball guard enters transfer portal

Ole Miss basketball guard Jarkel Joiner, who started his career at Cal State Bakersfield, has entered the transfer portal, according to On3’s Matt Zenitz. The unranked recruit from the 2017 class spent two seasons in the WAC before redshirting in 2019-20 and playing the past two seasons in the SEC.

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Jarkel Joiner has started 102 of 114 games in college, including 41 over the past two seasons at Ole Miss before entering the transfer portal again. This season, he averaged 13.2 points and 3.0 rebounds with 2.3 assists for the Rebels.

See the top available prospects with On3’s Transfer Portal Rankings.

The 6-foot-1 guard also shot 32.0 percent from the 3-point line in his career and averages 0.9 steals on the defensive end. Joiner is able to use his sixth year of eligibility thanks to the NCAA’s rules during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.

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.