If the last week of college basketball news is anything to go by, loyalty is well and truly dead.
Within 10 hours of the Division I men’s transfer portal opening, more than 1,000 players added their names to the pot, and coaches expect that number to triple when all is said and done on April 21, according to ESPN. Few teams have been hit harder by this transfer frenzy than Northwestern, which faces a rebuild of epic proportions after losing at least eight players to the portal.
Yet, lost in Monday night’s mass exodus was the departure of a player whose story complicates the narrative that today’s players are merely mercenaries who will jump ship for the first paycheck in sight: junior guard Jordan Clayton.
Clayton confirmed his entry into the portal in a Tuesday statement on Instagram, clarifying that he had graduated from NU in three years.
“Northwestern will always hold a special place in my heart,” Clayton wrote. “Over the past three years here, I’ve experienced some of the best memories of my life, alongside an amazing group of people who I now call family.”
Clayton’s statement alone distinguishes his exit from NU’s other transfers out, most of whom leaked the news through their agents and have made no public comment — notwithstanding nine words from junior guard Jayden Reid and eight from freshman forward Tyler Kropp.
Clayton’s journey from struggling mightily as a freshman to emerging from the wilderness near the end of his sophomore year to deputize for a banged-up squad to becoming a reliable 3-point shooter this season, makes his departure all the more respectable.
Even in a season where NU earned a second consecutive trip to the NCAA Tournament, Clayton’s first year in Evanston was, by some measures, historically awful.
That season, Clayton became just the fourth player in Division I men’s basketball since 1977 to play over 200 minutes while scoring fewer than 10 points, shooting under 18% from the field and committing at least 20 personal fouls.
His freshman campaign reached a nadir in NU’s 63-60 loss at Rutgers, when he played just 10 minutes but committed several costly errors and finished a team-low minus-10. He seldom appeared the rest of the season, and finished on an 18-game scoreless run.
At the start of his sophomore season, Clayton did not see the floor at all and planned to redshirt.
“Last year, we had a really good team,” Clayton told The Daily in the locker room after NU’s season-ending defeat to Purdue in the Big Ten Tournament. “I think it was just the outlook of what I saw in the year, and some personal reasons, I just thought it would be better for me to work on myself, get my game better throughout the year.”
It was easy to see Clayton’s career going the way of fellow NU Class of 2023 high school recruits Parker Strauss and Blake Barkley, neither of whom ever played meaningful minutes or stayed long enough to become upperclassmen in Evanston.
Instead, a turn for the worse in NU’s season presented Clayton with a career-defining decision.
When senior guard Brooks Barnhizer was stricken by a season-ending foot injury and graduate student guard Jalen Leach tore his ACL, the ’Cats were badly short of backcourt depth. There were still eight regular season games left to play, but this was not exactly a team on the NCAA Tournament bubble — NU stood at 4-8 in Big Ten play with no notable non-conference wins.
But, even with the season in dire straits, Clayton didn’t hesitate to step up for the team. He burned his redshirt, coming in to start the final 10 games and notching a then-career-high 11 points in the ’Cats’ Big Ten Tournament first round win over Minnesota.
“When it came down to it, and my brothers needed me, I was more than willing to burn my redshirt,” Clayton said.
This past campaign may have gone up in flames for coach Chris Collins’ side, but Clayton’s late-season emergence as a team captain was a rare bright spot. The Medford, Mass., native finished the year shooting 41.0% from 3-point range, including a 6-for-7 effort from beyond the arc in NU’s 78-74 win over Maryland in February.
By the time Clayton stepped off the court for the final time as a Wildcat, he turned the story of his NU career from one that seemed destined for irrelevance to one defined by leadership, self-improvement and a team-first attitude.
In the modern era of college basketball, eligibility is money.
One more year of eligibility allows a player to gain an extra annual Name, Image, Likeness salary and a graduate degree, not to mention one more special season of high-level basketball in a team environment.
Clayton surrendering the chance to play an extra year in service of helping a struggling NU team climb an uphill end-of-season battle was an act of selflessness that should not be overlooked in today’s increasingly individualistic environment.
He may not retire as a Wildcat, but Clayton’s sacrifice when the program needed him most should earn him a measure of respect equivalent to the four-year veterans who came before him.
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