Locked On Women’s Basketball: How the NCAA transfer portal works with Jamie Steyer Johnson

Now that most teams have exited the post-season tournament, players are beginning to flood into the portal once again. In April 2024, the Division I council approved changes to its transfer policy to allow student-athletes who meet specific requirements to be immediately eligible to play following a transfer.

Leite and Johnson used point guard Olivia Miles, who recently entered the transfer portal, as an example to discuss the impact of increased access to the portal:

“We’re having a lot of people whose seasons ended, and then you also have people who, if they’re deciding between potentially using another year of eligibility or going into the WNBA draft, the deadline for that is this coming week, and so their time is very short on whether to decide if they’re declaring and foregoing all of their eligibility, or if they’re staying in college,” Johnson said. “… A lot of people just make that decision all at once. So specifically for Olivia Miles … she’s going to be one of the most pursued players in the transfer portal. The top two types of players … that are most prized in the transfer portals … [are] point guards and posts, and that’s really what sets teams apart from the middle of the pack, bottom of the pack, to really the elite. That’s the kind of player that can set you up for success and really elevate the team around them.”

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“When you talk to a coach, if you’re saying, ‘Oh yeah, what are you looking for in this off season?’ Nine times out of 10, they’re going to say at least one of those two, and probably both, maybe depth at the point guard position,” Johnson continued. “You know, ‘we like what we have coming back, but we like more depth.’ You know, you can never have too much. And so especially someone like Olivia Miles is going to be a major, major factor there. And so there’s going to be other point guards in there too, because obviously when you’re prized like that, there’s going to be a lot of opportunities as well.”

Then, they reflected on how difficult it was pre-COVID to transfer between programs:

“Students, because these are student athletes, right, have always been able to transfer to different schools and change where they’re going to school for whatever reason, and that’s why a lot of these restrictions on athletes have been lifted,” Johnson explained. “In fact, that’s the reason that [name, image and likeness (NIL) deals exist] as well, is that students have always been able to capitalize off of their social media presence, been able to do these brand deals, and because these student athletes were playing sports, they were specifically prohibited from doing things that their classmates were able to do, even if it didn’t have anything with their sport. So that’s really the core of a lot of these issues. … The big difference in the reason we’re seeing more transfers is because you no longer sit out a year. You no longer are required to redshirt if you enter during the transfer window. And so that’s really the major change that we’ve seen … you can go to a new school every year, and as long as it’s within the window, as long as you’re making progress on your degree … you are able to play immediately. And so that’s really what we’ve seen.”

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“It provides a lot of freedom to players. It provides a lot of leverage. It means that coaches and programs, you’re constantly re-recruiting your players, you’re not just taking for granted that we’re gonna have these kids coming back next year,” Johnson said. “[Before], maybe you’ll have the odd transfer out for whatever reason, but it generally was a really big deal. It was a shock. It was something that was talked about. And really, I mean, it was just not common, and now it is, and it’s taken some time for people to catch up to that, I think, in the media, in the public, to go from transferring, ‘Oh my gosh. What’s wrong? Oh no. Why are they doing this?’ to it could be anything and and you just kind of have to wait and see if something comes out. If it seems like it’s a pattern, then sure there may be cause for concern in some places. But having players transfer out on its face doesn’t tell you much about the program. It just tells you more about the state of college athletics.”

Tune in to hear more from Johnson and Leite about the transfer portal, the players who’ve already entered it for this upcoming college offseason, and more. Make sure to subscribe to the Locked On Women’s Basketball podcast to keep learning about the WNBA, women’s college basketball, basketball history and much more!