Report: Illinois basketball transfer Jacob Grandison narrows shortlist

Illinois grad transfer Jacob Grandison is one of the most highly coveted college basketball prospects remaining in the transfer portal this offseason. On Friday evening, he revealed his top 10 finalists to On3’s Joe Tipton: USC, BYU, UCLA, DePaul, Arizona, Iowa State, Michigan, Kentucky, Oregon, and Duke.

Last year for the Illinois Fighting Illini, Grandison stuffed the stat sheet with 9.6 points, 3.8 rebounds, and 2.3 assists per game. He also shot 45.5 percent from the field. An elite three-point shooter, one of the reasons the California native is so highly coveted is the fact that he’s averaged over 40 percent from beyond-the-arc the past two seasons. Last year, he connected on 41 percent of this three-point attempts, establishing himself among the country’s elite shooters. In the 2021-2022 season, Grandison ranked in the top ten in the Big Ten Conference in three-point shooting percentage (9th). Before playing two seasons with Illinois, he played two seasons for Holy Cross.

For all the latest on where all the different college basketball prospects across America are headed this offseason, keep it locked to the On3 Transfer Portal Wire.

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.