Illinois transfer Jacob Grandison will take official visit at Duke

Illinois transfer Jacob Grandison will arrive in Durham, North Carolina on Thursday for an official visit with Duke, according to On3’s Joe Tipton. Since entering the transfer portal this offseason, he has drawn widespread interest from blue-blood programs looking to add another wing option.

Last week, after withdrawing from the NBA Draft, Jacob Grandison revealed his top 10 finalists to Tipton: USC, BYU, UCLA, DePaul, Arizona, Iowa State, Michigan, Kentucky, Oregon, and Duke.

Last year for the Illinois Fighting Illini, Grandison averaged 9.6 points, 3.8 rebounds, and 2.3 assists as a starter. He also shot 45.5 percent from the field and 41 percent from the 3-point line, establishing himself as one of the best veteran shooters in the country.

The 6-foot-6 California native enters the 2022-23 season as a graduate student with one year of eligibility thanks to the free year granted by the NCAA during the COVID-19 pandemic. He has already transferred once in his college career, moving from Holy Cross to the Big Ten after two seasons.

More information 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.