BREAKING: MJ Rice commits to NC State basketball

NC State basketball continues to build its roster for next season. The latest addition is former Kansas wing MJ Rice, who announced his decision Wednesday morning after visiting NC State over the weekend.

As a freshman at Kansas, Rice was a modest contributor off the bench, averaging 2.2 points in 7.5 minutes through 23 games. However, the 6-foot-5, 215-pound native of Henderson, N.C., which is just north of the Triangle region, is still well-remembered as a blue-chip prospect.

Rice was a McDonald’s All-American in 2022 who was rated by the On3 Industry Rankings, which compares all the major recruiting services, as the No. 29 overall prospect in the 2022 class.

There was a time when Rice was considered a heavy NC State lean during the recruiting process, so the potential match quickly made sense from that regard.

Rice becomes the fourth player from the transfer portal to pick NC State.

Butler leading scorer and sophomore guard Jayden Taylor committed to the Pack on April 11 after also taking a visit to Arkansas. On Monday, Arizona State grad transfer and sharp-shooting guard DJ Horne, a native of the Raleigh area, committed. Horne averaged 12.5 points per game on Arizona State’s NCAA Tournament team and also considered Wake Forest.

On Tuesday, Clemson sophomore forward/center Ben Middlebrooks picked NC State. Like Rice and Horne, Middlebrooks visited Raleigh last weekend. He also made a trip to Auburn.

MJ Rice is headed home, 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.