Daemar Kelly has found success at his first two collegiate stops and now will take on a new challenge in the Mid-American Conference.

Kelly, a Penn Hills grad, announced his commitment to play basketball for Northern Illinois on Thursday.

Kelly spent this past season at Saint Francis, where he averaged 8.3 points and 3.3 rebounds and scored the go-ahead basket to beat top-seeded Central Connecticut State, 46-43, in the Northeast Conference championship to send the Red Flash to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament for the first time since 1991 and the second time in school history.

Kelly played his freshman season at Quinnipiac and helped the Bobcats capture the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference regular season title.

At Penn Hills, he was a 1,000-point scorer who led the Indians to the WPIAL Class 5A championship in 2023. The three-time all-section honoree averaged 17.4 points as a junior when he was the Section 5 Player of the Year.

NIU is coming off a 6-25 season, including a 2-16 mark in the Mid-American Conference (MAC).

Kelly entered the transfer portal after Saint Francis announced it would be transitioning from Division I to Division III for the 2026-27 school year.

Two former Saint Francis teammates also finalized transfers, according to verbalcommits.com — junior small forward Valentino Pinedo to UNC Greensboro and sophomore point guard Ace Talbert to Gardner-Webb.

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• Frederik Jellum, a 6-foot-10 forward from Copenhagen, Denmark, commited to play basketball at Duquesne on Thursday.

Jellum recently completed his final high school season at Cushing Academy in New York.

He played the 2023-24 season in the Basketligaen, a U19 league in Denmark.

• A pair of Duquesne walk-on sophomore point guards entered the transfer portal, according to verbalcommits.com — Seamus McDermott and Lucas Perusek. Both played in two games in 2023-24 but did not see any action this past season.

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• Dylan Jay, a freshman shooting guard, also entered the portal, according to verbalcommits.com. He redshirted this past season, his first in Morgantown.