Over the past handful or so years, one of college sport’s biggest evolutions has become the transfer portal, where student-athletes can now transfer from one school to another without sitting out a year.
And not many have taken advantage of that new wrinkle more than former Kankakee boys basketball standout AJ Storr.
Storr, who was a member of the Kays’ 2019-20 IHSA Class 3A Sweet Sixteen squad, is in the transfer portal once again, first reported by ESPN’s Jeff Borzello, after spending the 2024-25 season with the Kansas Jayhawks.
The 6-foot-7 guard appeared in all 34 games for Kansas this season, including four starts. He averaged 6.1 points and 1.7 rebounds per game for a Jayhawks team that finished 21-13 and was eliminated by Arkansas in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Wherever Storr ends up for his senior year, it will be his eighth school in as many years, dating back to his junior year at Kankakee. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Storr transferred to Bishop Gorman in Las Vegas and then Arizona Compass Prep in Chandler, evnetually reclassifying from the class of 2021 to 2022. He spent a post-graduate year at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., developing into a four-star recruit in the class of 2022.
He began his college career at St. John’s, where he was named a 2023 All-Big East Freshman pick after averaging 8.8 points per game across 33 games (17 starts). He spent his sophomore year at Wisconsin, where he had a breakout campaign and earned second-team All-Big Ten recognition after averaging 16.8 points and 3.9 rebounds per game.
After initially declaring for the NBA Draft last year, Storr instead entered the transfer portal and settled on Kansas. As a member of a Jayhawks team that never quite lived up to their lofty expectations, Storr had career lows in scoring, rebounding, assists (0.7 per game), shooting percentage (38.4%), 3-point percentage (29.1%), free-throw percentage (68.1%) and minutes per game (15.7).
Storr is the second men’s basketball player with local roots to switch schools this year. Owen Freeman, the 2022 Daily Journal Boys Basketball Player of the Year as a member of Bradley-Bourbonnais, transferred from Iowa to Creighton following the end of the Hawkeyes’ season.