(photo by Sean McNamara, for the Gazette-Mail)

West Virginia redshirt freshman safety Kwantel Raines entered his name into the transfer portal on Tuesday after first-year WVU football coach Neal Brown alluded to that possibility during his Monday press conference.

“He is trying to figure out what he wants to do,” Brown said. “I haven’t talked to him yet.”

247Sports broke the news of Raines’ intent to leave the Mountaineers on Tuesday, and later in the day Raines gave an interview to Pittsburgh Sports Now.

“This decision to transfer was very hard,” Raines said to PSN’s Mike Vukovcan. “I was there [at West Virginia] for two years and I really liked it there, but I felt it was time to go.”

Raines said he left WVU because of “things going on at home.” The Aliquippa, Pennsylvania native also said he had reached out to a school closer to his home town than Morgantown for a possible landing spot.

“I reached out to Pitt already and if they reach back out to me and have interest, there’s a good chance that I’ll be there, but you never know if schools want you yet so we’ll see,” Raines said. “So I guess it’s all in their ballpark right now. That’s the only school that I’ve contacted, although I’ve had some schools reach out to me.

“It would be a blessing if they would offer me again but honestly, I’ve always treated every offer that I received as a blessing.”