����������ϼ�

UNM freshman guard Jake Hall plans to enter his name in the NCAA college basketball transfer portal, indicating he may explore playing at another school next season.  Returning to play for the Lobos is still on the table, the Journal has been told.

The 6-foot-4 guard led the Lobos in scoring (16.4 points per game) and broke UNM’s single-season 3-pointers made record on his way to being named Mountain West Freshman of the Year.

The NCAA’s transfer portal opened Tuesday and closes April 21. Any player not in the portal by then would not be eligible to play for a different team next season, per NCAA rules.

Hall has not formally added his name to the transfer portal, but his doing so was not something the UNM Lobos coaching staff was unaware of, but knew Hall hoped to get through the weekend before releasing the information.

Word of the decision hit social media midday Friday, but not from Hall himself, rather from a national recruiting reporter. It came while the Hall family and Lobo coaching staff were together on the first day of the official on-campus recruiting visit with Dax Hall, Jake Hall’s little brother, a 6-1 combo guard who averaged 27.0 points, won CIF San Diego Section Player of the Year while leading Santa Fe (California) Christian to a 26-5 record (his older brother’s Lobos also had a 26-win season) and was offered a scholarship by Olen months ago.  

Jake Hall had no intention of releasing the news concerning his portal status before his brother was able to have his recruiting visit. 

"I think he's good enough (on his own)," Jake Hall said two weeks ago when asked about the possibility of his brother and him playing together in college, something they didn’t do in high school. “He's going to create his own path, and he's going to be a great player one day. Man, I'm just super proud and excited to see what comes for him.”

Adding to the bond he and his brother have and how much apart of each other’s recruiting processes they are, Jake Hall told the Journal in an interview last week after UNM’s season-ending loss to Tulsa in the NIT semifinals that while he didn’t have a timeline on his own decision about where he’d play in the 2026-27 season, he was excited about being a part of the process with his brother. 

"I'm just going to go home and pray about it — sit down with my family and try and go hang out with my brother and try and go on a few of his visits," Jake Hall said, before grinning when it was pointed out to him he probably wouldn’t be allowed on recruiting visits while he was a college player himself. 

"... At the end of the day, I'm his brother. I want to be a part of it. He was a part of all my visits, and I thought that was really special and I really could lean on him for advice and whatnot. Hopefully I can do the same for him." 

People with direct knowledge of the current college basketball transfer market and not affiliated with UNM confirmed to the Journal that Jake Hall is expected to have offers well north of $2 million next season with even that being called a “pretty conservative” estimate by one source after the Journal originally posted the news.

Hall has acknowledged that pluses for returning to the Lobos include possibly playing with his brother and knowing he likely wasn’t going to find a bond between the staff and himself and his family that is as close to the one he has with UNM. 

Jake Hall will have a “Do Not Contact” tag with his name, sources told the Journal, meaning other college basketball programs are prohibited from reaching out to him during the process. The Halls, and his agent, can still talk to schools.

The Lobos went 26-11 this past season. A few days after the season ended, UNM big men Tomislav Buljan and JT Rock entered the portal, while freshman Uriah Tenette announced he’d be returning.

The transfer portal has taken a particularly harsh bite in recent years out of UNM — a program that benefitted from greatly from transfers throughout the past 27 seasons of the Mountain West era with all-league players from Ruben Douglas to Drew Gordon, J.R. Giddens to Danny Granger, Jaelen House to Jamal Mashburn Jr., and many more. 

The previous two seasons, however, the portal has taken from UNM 2024 Mountain West Freshman of the Year JT Toppin to Texas Tech the past two seasons and 2025 Mountain West Player of the Year Donovan Dent to UCLA this past season. 

Each reportedly earned in revenue share or NIL related compensation around $3 million this past season at their power-conference programs. 

Hall and Buljan may be the next Lobos who parlayed excellent play and production under the past two Lobos coaches into life changing financial money at new schools.

Reach Geoff Grammer at ggrammer@abqjournal.com or follow him on Twitter (X) .