Why are Penn basketball players, men and women, hitting the transfer portal?

Penn men’s basketball starters Lucas Monroe and Jonah Charles have entered the NCAA transfer portal, joining women’s star Kayla Padilla.

Each will complete this season and academic year, with plans to graduate in the spring before moving on.

What’s going on here? Business — mostly — as usual in the Ivy League, which doesn’t allow graduate students to play.

The new wrinkle is that potential grad transfers are entering the portal in-season. Theportalreport.com, which first reported that Monroe and Charles are in the portal, explained how the NCAA Division I Council modified its transfer rules in September to allow potential postgraduate transfers to enter the portal at any time.

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In practice, this only serves as an announcement to interested schools that these players will be available. There are no surprises within the Penn programs. In 2019, Penn men’s star Ryan Betley talked before the season that he would be transferring after graduating in the spring of 2020. That’s how it played out. Betley started 23 games in 2020-21 for California.

“No difference,” Penn men’s coach Steve Donahue said of what’s happening with Monroe and Charles. “They can’t play here next year.”

It’s really a double hit for the Ivy programs. This was the only Division I league not to play in 2020-21, and the only league to prohibit graduate students from playing.

Donahue said to expect two more men’s players, Max Lorca-Lloyd and Michael Moshkovitz, both regular contributors, also to enter the portal. Jordan Dingle, in his third season playing, is able to stay at Penn, Donahue said, because Dingle took a leave of absence for the 2020-21 academic year when the Ivy League canceled all sports because of the pandemic.

The Ivy League is the only Division I conference that does not allow graduate students to compete on its sports teams. Donahue noted that all this is not part of the current rise in transfers caused by transfers being immediately eligible to play instead of having to sit out a year.

“The entire Ivy League had no undergraduate transfers this year,” Donahue said, referring to men’s basketball.

Donahue said Charles and Lorca-Lloyd each will have two seasons of eligibility remaining after graduating from Penn because of seasons missed to injury.

Of these Penn players, Padilla is likely to have the highest-level suitors pursuing her. The 5-foot-9 guard from Torrance, Calif., has been a star since she got to Penn’s campus, making first-team All-Ivy as a freshman and sophomore. This season, Padilla is averaging 15.6 points and 5.5 rebounds.

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“She could play anywhere,” said Penn women’s coach Mike McLaughlin, noting that Padilla told him she would have preferred to finish out at the Palestra. “Kayla and I met probably six or eight weeks ago. She’s in Wharton, our business school. We decided that we didn’t want to make this a distraction. She’s obviously going to be in demand. She’s got a couple of schools she’d prefer. We’re working on that, rather than open it up to the masses.”

McLaughlin added, “We have an obligation to these young people for life. The COVID year just created this unfair thing in the Ivy League. There’s no other way to put it.”