RJ Luis Jr., '25 Big East POY, granted injunction to play for LSU - ESPN

A Louisiana judge on Monday granted RJ Luis Jr., the 2025 Big East Player of the Year, a temporary injunction to play for LSU this season despite signing multiple NBA contracts.

After starring for St. John's in 2024-25 and securing second-team All-American honors, Luis went undrafted in the 2025 NBA draft. He signed a two-way contract with the Jazz, and then an Exhibit 10 contract with the Celtics' G League affiliate after he was traded from Utah to Boston and later waived. He saw preseason action but never appeared in a regular-season game.

Luis, who committed to LSU in May, hugged LSU coach Will Wade after the ruling by East Baton Rouge Parish District Court Judge Ronald R. Johnson.

The NCAA has been battling players in the 2022 class who have sought a fifth year of eligibility after they were excluded from the new age-based eligibility rules that will give every athlete five seasons to compete in the years ahead. Luis is not a fifth-year player. His case, however, could create a new pipeline of players who have signed professional contracts and want to make their way back to college basketball and the millions of dollars available to them if they do.

On Friday, the NCAA won its motion to reverse a federal preliminary injunction in Colorado that had created a blanket waiver for players in the 2022 high school class to play a fifth season. But it has lost the majority of cases at the state level in those eligibility cases.

Luis' situation could start a new wave of eligibility challenges.

«I hear that every time we do one of these eligibility cases: 'This is going to be the end of the NCAA.' That is not true,» Elliot Sol Abrams, one of Luis' attorneys, told reporters after the judge's ruling Monday. «The NCAA chose to