SEC Basketball Transfer Portal Day 3: Time to make a move

Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

By Chris Marler

It’s day three of the transfer portal, and the flurry of activity in the initial 48 hours has started to slow down. What hasn’t happened yet, is the flurry of commitments.

This weekend will be incredibly busy for recruiting visits across the country, with hundreds of players taking visits. Here’s the latest in the men’s and women’s transfer portal.

By the Numbers

After two complete days, 896 players on the men’s side have entered their name in the portal. That number hasn’t really seen any crazy growth since the first 12 hours of the portal opening. Not much has changed there, but what is very surprising is that not much has changed for the number of commitments yet either.

In the past, we saw dozens of top recruits enter the portal with a do not contact tag and ultimately chose a school almost immediately. That’s not the case this year.

Just 19 players have found a new home three days into the 15 day window. That will obviously change, but it’s very odd to see the lack of activity considering the window is not only shorter but also moved back until the end of the NCAA tournament.

I, like most people, assumed the poaching and tampering that has happened throughout the last several years in basketball and football would have continued. That’s not to say that it hasn’t, but the patience, or high leverage negotiating, that’s happening isn’t producing the same results as the past.

SEC’s shockingly slow start

The SEC has been the new money conference in college basketball over the last few years. The football-first league has managed to find its way into way more relevancy from top to bottom and is coming off getting the most NCAA Tournament bids of any conference in America for a second straight year. Just like we’ve seen in football for decades, that has led to an arms race amongst the 16 teams in NIL and roster construction.

Through two days, however, the SEC is primarily a non-factor in the cycle. The exits have been abundant with 15 of the 16 teams having at least two players enter the portal. In total, 65 players from the SEC have entered the portal. That’s not out of the ordinary considering 69 players entered a year ago. What is very out of the ordinary is that the grand total for commitments from the portal into the SEC is – one. That’s it.

NEW: Alabama guard Jalil Bethea plans to enter the NCAA transfer portal, @JoeTipton reports. https://t.co/yCbvo8r0N2 pic.twitter.com/qlLGNrYuYL

— Transfer Portal (@TransferPortal) April 8, 2026

Even the players who have entered aren’t exactly the cream of the crop with just six SEC players ranking in the top 50 portal players according to On3.

In the 2025 cycle the SEC landed 27 of the top 100 players, but many have found themselves on the outside looking in at teams like Michigan, Arizona, St. John’s and Louisville for some of the most elite players.

Don’t expect a discount

After what we saw in the football portal and the quarterback market that came along with it, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the floor and ceiling for NIL deals rose significantly from last season. In the 2025 cycle, guards were the highest earners with $2 million being the going rate for a top 25 player at that position. A select few garnered $3 million, but that included high school recruits and wasn’t just tethered to transfers.

This year the numbers have skyrocketed. According to the Field of 68’s Jeff Goodman, this is the market price for the three positions in highest demand: