Judges restore a fifth year to 100-plus players, the first game goes outdoors, and the Senate votes Monday

College basketball's rosters are being settled in court, five weeks before the season starts.

In three days, three judges restored a fifth year of eligibility to more than 100 players. A McLennan County, Texas, judge granted a temporary injunction to 31 plaintiffs on Sept. 21, headed by Texas Tech forward Darrion Williams. 1 Judge Kara Krothe, in Indiana's Monroe County Circuit Court, granted a preliminary injunction to nearly 90 athletes on Sept. 23, a group that includes Iowa State's Tamin Lipsey, Miami's Malik Reneau, Kansas's Tre White and Wichita State's Kenyon Giles. 2 A New York state supreme court judge in Niagara Falls handed Michigan guard Roddy Gayle a fifth year on Sept. 24, in a case Gayle brought by himself. 3

The same week, the first basketball of the 2026-27 calendar went up, outdoors, on a court laid over the floor of a Charleston tennis stadium. South Carolina's women beat College of Charleston 91-60, Vanderbilt's men beat Virginia 82-73, and College of Charleston's men beat The Citadel 69-59 in a tripleheader at Credit One Stadium on Sept. 27. 4

On Monday evening the Senate is scheduled to vote on the Protect College Sports Act, the bill that would move the five-year rule and the one-free-transfer limit out of state courtrooms and into federal law. 5

The boards reordered the same week. CBS Sports' preseason Top 25 And 1, in its 27th version, moved Iowa State from No. 13 to No. 11 with Lipsey back and Miami from No. 25 to No. 16 with Reneau. 6 Both moves came with a cost attached: Iowa State guard Killyan Toure had offseason shoulder surgery and is expected to sit until after January, which is the hole Lipsey fills. 26

A yearbook's board and a columnist's board now agree on the top three and diverge right below them:

Both are projections made before a possession has been played, and the poll that matters officially, the AP Top 25, arrives later in the fall.

Three roster fights remain live. Kansas's Tre White won eligibility on Sept. 23 and has not been confirmed back; Bill Self said he looked forward to talking with White about his future. 6 LSU has four players listed on its official roster with the season five weeks away, and eleven more whom coach Will Wade recruited are waiting on eligibility. 8 Wade said he would "abide by what the SEC tells us to abide by" on former Big East Player of the Year RJ Luis Jr., who holds a Baton Rouge injunction but plays in a conference that has barred players who signed professional contracts from returning. 8

Gonzaga is running the same gauntlet on the international side. The NCAA cleared French point guard Nathan De Sousa on Sept. 23 through an international eligibility waiver; the 23-year-old spent five seasons with Cholet in France's LNB Elite and averaged 10.9 points and 4.9 assists last season. 9 Florida transfer Xaivian Lee still awaits a hearing in Los Angeles, and two more Gonzaga transfers, Dayton's Javon Bennett and Florida State's Chauncey Wiggins, have cases in Ohio and Georgia. 9

Texas Tech is also without a timeline for forward JT Toppin, who is rehabbing a knee injury. "I'm not rushing it in any way, shape or form," coach Grant McCasland said. 10

Nevada's Steve Alford will retire after this season, the school announced Thursday. Alford has coached 36 seasons, won 724 games, and enters his final year tenth among active Division I coaches in victories. He is one of two coaches, with St. John's Rick Pitino, to take six different programs to the NCAA Tournament. 11 Nevada has reached two NCAA Tournaments and one NIT in his eight seasons in Reno, and won 24 games last season. 11

Texas Tech took a commitment from 2027 point guard Aaron Britt Jr. on Sept. 21. Britt is a 6-foot guard from Villages Charter School in Jacksonville, Florida, who averaged 14.4 points and 4.1 assists as a junior, and he is rated a four-star by 247Sports and ESPN and a three-star by On3. 10

Syracuse landed the bigger name. Moussa Kamissoko, a 6-foot-7 forward from the Bronx, committed on Sept. 25; 247Sports' composite ranks him the No. 14 player in the 2027 class and a five-star, making him the first top-20 recruit of Gerry McNamara's tenure and the second player in the Orange's 2027 class. 12

Three games, one court, and a tennis stadium on Daniel Island:

South Carolina gave the event its largest crowd and its only women's game, and Dawn Staley spent the days before it warning that her roster would arrive half-built. "Probably won't have the whole roster so whoever is actually healthy enough to play we're going to play them," she said on Sept. 26. 15 Nine Gamecocks played. Chloe Kitts, Ashlyn Watkins, Alicia Tournebize, Jerzy Robinson, Kelsi Andrews and Kaeli Wynn watched. 14

Kitts and Watkins are both working back from ACL tears and long absences — Kitts since October 2025, Watkins since January 2025, which she followed with a season away from the team for her mental health. 15 Tournebize hurt a finger in late August with the French national team, and Wynn is being brought along slowly after missing her senior high school season with knee injuries. 15

The newcomers carried the night. Jordan Lee, a transfer from Texas, made all four of her 3-point attempts for 15 points in her first start, and freshmen Oliviyah Edwards and Justine Loubens and fifth-year guard Brooke Quarles-Daniels all made their debuts. 414 South Carolina plays its second exhibition against Benedict on Oct. 23 and opens the regular season Nov. 2 against Maryland in Paris. 4

Oregon's Employment Relations Board is weighing whether Oregon State's women's basketball players are state employees with the right to organize, the first time a state board rather than the National Labor Relations Board has taken up the question. Ten of the 13 players signed a union petition this summer, and the university objected at the end of August. 16

Players testified in mid-September that the demands match paid work. "I hope that if we get seen as employees that people on my team will get paid fairly," said Jenna Villa, a second-year guard. 16 Oregon State's provost, Roy Haggerty, argued the opposite: the university sponsors the sport so that athletes can "perform to the maximum level of their abilities," which he described as an enhancement of the college experience. 16 Hearings resume in October with athletics staff, the administrative law judge will recommend a decision to the three-member board, and the earliest ruling is expected in December. 16

Kentucky State's Aminata Seck has been in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for more than a month. Seck, 26, a senior from Senegal, was detained on Aug. 7 at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport before her team's trip to New York, because her student visa had expired, according to her lawyer, Sadiqa Reynolds. 17

Seck was wearing a knee brace for an ACL injury when she was taken into custody. Reynolds said Seck has been moved at least four times, has had difficulty getting access to basic care for her knee, and had received only ibuprofen; when Reynolds traveled to the Grayson County Detention Center on Sept. 21, staff there told her Seck was at another facility without saying where. 17 Kentucky State, a Division II program in Frankfort, said it had no information to share, and ICE did not respond to requests for comment. 17 Seck started 20 of 26 games last season, averaged 11.7 points and 7.3 rebounds, and was named third-team All-SIAC. 17

The Senate is scheduled to vote on the Protect College Sports Act at 5:30 p.m. Eastern on Monday, at the end of a week of procedural votes that cleared its path. On Sept. 24 the chamber adopted the Cruz-Cantwell substitute amendment 77-23 and invoked cloture on the amended bill 74-25. 18

The amended bill would give the NCAA a limited antitrust exemption to restore five-year eligibility and allow one transfer without sitting out; a second transfer would cost a year of competition, with exceptions. 5 It would raise the revenue-share cap schools may pay athletes directly to $48.8 million from roughly $21 million, create an agent registry with a maximum 5-percent fee, crack down on above-market NIL deals, let conferences pool media rights, and limit the size of big-revenue conferences. 519

Supporters expect at least two-thirds of the chamber, including Alabama's Tommy Tuberville, a former Auburn football coach who switched his vote this month. 5 New Jersey's Cory Booker has voted against the bill in procedural votes and proposed a $5 million cap on coaches' salaries. 5 The House is in recess until after the November midterms, and the bill's prospects there are uncertain. 5

Conference leaders are already building the alternative. Athletic directors have discussed adopting the $48.8 million cap on their own and enforcing it through the College Sports Commission, plus a conference-level agent registry and transfer limit, according to memos sent to school personnel over the last two weeks. One power-conference athletic director said every player on his roster is negotiating now. 19 The commission denied nearly 500 deals worth $67 million between July 1 and Aug. 31 while clearing more than 12,000 deals worth over $225 million. 19

Chris Spatola, an ESPN college basketball analyst and a Duke assistant from 2007 to 2012, died on Sept. 21. He was 47. 20

Spatola started four years at Army, finished tenth on the program's career scoring list with 1,543 points, and served on active duty from 2002 to 2007, including a deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. On Duke's staff he won four ACC titles and the 2010 national championship, and he had worked for ESPN since 2015. 20

Exhibitions leave no record, and the regular season is five weeks away. The women open on Nov. 1 at noon Eastern when Villanova and Notre Dame meet at the Palazzetto dello Sport in Rome, with the men's teams from both schools playing a doubleheader at 9:30 a.m. Eastern. Domestic play fills in from Nov. 2, when Maryland meets South Carolina and Oklahoma faces North Carolina in Paris. Both NCAA tournaments expand to 76 teams this season, with the women's Final Four on April 2 and the championship game on April 4 in Columbus, Ohio. 21

Every ranking and roster judgment above is a projection or a court ruling rather than a result. The AP and coaches polls, the NCAA's NET rankings, KenPom's numbers and every conference standing arrive with the season, and until then the exhibitions in Charleston are the only basketball anyone has played.