Georgia transfer Jake Wilkins has committed to Cal out of the NCAA transfer portal, his agent, CSE Talent’s Darrell Comer, told DraftExpress’ Jonathan Givony. Wilkins will have three years of eligibility remaining.

Wilkins averaged 4.9 points per game for the Bulldogs this past season over 10.2 minutes per game. He appeared in 32 games, but logged zero starts.

Before arriving in college, Wilkins was a four-star recruit in the 2025 class, according to the Rivals Industry Rankings, which is a proprietary algorithm that compiles ratings and rankings from all four primary recruiting media services. Wilkins was the No. 45 overall recruit and No. 11 small forward in the cycle.

Notably, he’s the son of Dominique Wilkins, a Hall of Fame member and two-time NBA Slam Dunk Contest champion. His also attended Georgia to play his college basketball. Now, his son is off the the west coast to continue his hoops journey.

Wilkins plan to enter the portal was reported on the day before it opened. Once April 7 rolled around, Wilkins, along with thousands of other college basketball players hit the open market. The NCAA transfer portal closes on April 22, 15 days after it opened.

He’ll join a Golden Bears squad coming off their best season in a decade. They finished 22-12 but failed to reach the NCAA Tournament. The last time Cal went dancing was in 2016 when they earned a No. 4-seed under former head coach Cuonzo Martin. Entering year four of the Mark Madsen era, they’ll look to turn that around during the 2026-27 season.

For his former team, Georgia, the Bulldogs would finish the season with a 22-11 record, including a 10-8 mark against the SEC. In turn, the Bulldogs received a No. 8 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Eventually, they fell to No. 9 seed Saint Louis in the first round.

To keep up with the latest players on the move, check out On3’s Transfer Portal wire. The On3 Transfer Portal Instagram account and Twitter account are excellent resources to stay up to date with the latest moves.

Photo:

Carlos J. Calo / Eclipse Sportswire

Lexington, Ky.

This much is as certain as anything can be in horse racing. Emerging Market is headed to Kentucky Derby 2026. As for trainer Chad Brown’s other invitations, it’s complicated.

“I’m hoping to make a decision once we get past this weekend,” Brown said Friday in a phone call from Florida to reporters at Keeneland. “I’m still talking to the respective owners and observing the horses and observing the prospective field for the Derby.”

Brown’s 3,000th win is delivered by Zulu Kingdom.

After he called Grade 2 Louisiana Derby winner Emerging Market “a definite,” Brown explained where he stands with Blue Grass (G1) runner-up Ottinho and seventh-place Wood Memorial (G2) finisher Iron Honor, both of whom have invitations awaiting RSVPs.

“I look at it two ways,” Brown said. “I don’t want to drag it on so that people that are behind these horses (in the qualifying standings) don’t have clarity if they’re going to get in. I’m not doing it for that. But at the same time, I don’t want to go back and change what I say publicly.”

Brown usually does not breeze his horses back until at least two weeks after a start. Ottinho and Iron Honor raced last Saturday. Entries for the Derby will be taken in two weeks on April 25. That puts the five-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer between a rock of patience and a hard place of urgency.

“If I take them out of contention now, but then the Derby complexion changes a bit, or we change our mind with something based on how the horses are training, then I have to undo that and put them back in,” Brown said.

Ottinho, who is owned by Three Chimneys Farm, clinched his Derby berth last Saturday. Iron Honor, who belongs to St. Elias Stable, Bill Lawrence and Glassman Racing, moved off the top of the stand-by list Friday when Todd Pletcher-trained Class President was dropped out because of bone bruising.

“I’d almost rather make somebody wait to know that they’re getting in than take it away from them when I said I wasn’t running and now I am,” Brown said. “I think that’s a worse scenario of how to handle it professionally. I’m going to give myself a little time so, when I do say something, that’s final.”

Michael McCarthy-trained Stark Contrast, a turf specialist who finished second in the Jeff Ruby Steaks (G3) on the Turfway Park synthetic course, is between Ottinho and Iron Honor on the invitation list. This week McCarthy all but ruled out the Kentucky Derby.

“He may win on Saturday (May 2), but I don’t think it will be in the Kentucky Derby,” McCarthy told “At the Races” host Steve Byk on Monday. “Obviously we’ve got the American Turf (G1) right out in front of us. He is an undefeated turf runner. … Being by Caravaggio out of a Quality Road mare, we just think something like the American Turf might be in his wheelhouse.

Winless with his first nine Derby horses, Brown had this year’s early futures favorite before March 28. That was when undefeated Paladin, owned by a Coolmore-led partnership, suffered a condylar fracture in a workout at Payson Park in Florida. Brown said Friday that the two-time Grade 2-winning colt by Gun Runner is “excellent” after surgery, recovering at Ashford Stud in Versailles, Ky., and due to be shipped to Saratoga in July.

Emerging Market, who is owned by Klaravich Stables, is only 2-for-2 with his debut victory coming only two months ago at Tampa Bay Downs. If Kentucky weather cooperates, Brown said he hoped to ship the Candy Ride colt from Payson Park to Churchill Downs on or around next Sunday.

“That would give me time to work the horse a couple more times here and then head up,” he said. “He’s trained well at Payson Park all winter. We’ll just keep on this consistent surface that he’s been on and just make one surface change over at Churchill. There’s no sense in bringing him to Keeneland right now, and I’m not open to Churchill until around the 19th.”

Leonatus in 1883 is the only horse to have won the Kentucky Derby with only two previous starts in his past performance.

A man imprisoned for nearly 30 years before being exonerated won a landmark election in New Orleans promising to fix a judicial system that failed him. Now, Louisiana’s governor, Jeff Landry, and the Republican-controlled state legislature are racing to eliminate his job before he can be sworn in.

Calvin Duncan won 68% of the vote last November to become the Orleans parish clerk of criminal court after pledging to reform the justice system based on his own experience fighting to access court records while in maximum security prison.

Duncan rebuilt his life, in part by running for and winning the clerk’s office. But Louisiana state senate Republicans on Wednesday voted to scrap Duncan’s new job as part of a broader effort to streamline the judiciary in New Orleans, a Democratic hub with a predominantly Black electorate. The state legislature is largely Republican and white – and the deeply red state has been leading efforts to gut the Voting Rights Act.

Duncan’s swearing-in is scheduled for 4 May.

He told the Associated Press he believes he’s being retaliated against by Louisiana officials who have long denied his innocence, even though his name is listed on the National Registry of Exonerations.

Republicans say it isn’t personal and defend the effort as a step toward government efficiency.

“The citizens of New Orleans overwhelmingly said: ‘I want to give this person a chance, he can make a difference,’” Duncan, a Democrat, told lawmakers during a March committee hearing. “What this bill does, it says, ‘Thank you but you wasted your time.’ It disenfranchises everybody.”

The case started with the 1981 murder of 23-year-old David Yeager and landed Duncan in prison for more than 28 years. In 2011, on the eve of a hearing to consider new evidence, prosecutors offered to reduce Duncan’s sentence to time served if he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and armed robbery. Duncan was freed, but he didn’t give up trying to clear his name.

Finally, in 2021, a judge agreed that he had been unjustly convicted and vacated Duncan’s sentence altogether.

As state attorney general in 2023, Landry opposed Duncan’s petition to be compensated for his wrongful conviction. Duncan withdrew the petition after Landry’s successor, Liz Murrill, threatened to go after Duncan’s law license in the state. When Duncan ran for clerk, Murrill vowed to take “further action” against him if he did not stop calling himself “exonerated”.

Landry and Murrill have pointed to Duncan having accepted the 2011 plea deal for manslaughter and armed robbery.

“The attorney general made it clear during the election that if I continued to accurately speak about my innocence and exoneration that I would face consequences from her office,” Duncan told the Associated Press. “We are seeing those consequences today as she and the governor try to undo the will of 68% of voters in New Orleans.”

Murrill said she had “no involvement” in the move to eliminate the office.

Landry told the AP that eliminating Duncan’s elected office was about improving “government efficiency” and “cleaning up a system in [New Orleans] that has been plagued by dysfunction and corruption for years”.

Proponents of consolidating the criminal court clerk with the civil court clerk say the offices are combined in other parishes. Terminating the criminal court clerk position would save the state an estimated $27,300, according to the office of the legislative auditor, which added that the costs of combining clerks’ offices were “unknown”.

The bill’s Republican author, state senator Jay Morris, who represents a district in north Louisiana, acknowledged that once Duncan’s elected position is eliminated, the civil court clerk might struggle to handle the influx of cases. The solution, he says, is to “hire someone”.

Other New Orleans elected judicial officials whose jobs may be eliminated in the future would be allowed to serve out their terms – but not Duncan.

Morris told lawmakers that the goal is to pass the law in time to prevent Duncan from taking office before the start of his four-year term.

The bill, on track to be passed by the GOP-controlled house and approved by Landry, would immediately go into effect with the governor’s signature.

“I have never seen something so barbaric,” state senator Royce Duplessis, a Democrat representing New Orleans, said on the senate floor. “I understand politics and I know you all are going to vote how you are going to vote. But just know, when we are all done here, history has a record.”

Duncan, 62, was the driving force behind a 2020 US supreme court decision that ended non-unanimous jury convictions. He has also founded a non-profit dedicated to expanding incarcerated people’s access to the court system. He has said being elected to the clerk’s office was the culmination of his life’s work.