The NCAA Just Lost Another One: RJ Luis Jr. Cleared to Suit Up for LSU
It's not quite "run it back," but RJ Luis Jr. just got the green light to trade the NBA fringe for the bright lights of Baton Rouge.
A Louisiana judge granted the 2025 Big East Player of the Year a temporary injunction Monday, clearing the 6-foot-7 wing to play for LSU this season. This isn't some redshirt-year loophole — Luis signed multiple NBA contracts, got waived, and is now coming back to college basketball.
Wait, how did we get here?
After torching the Big East with St. John's in 2024-25 — 18.2 points and 7.2 rebounds a night, plus second-team All-American honors — Luis went undrafted. He signed a two-way deal with the Utah Jazz, got traded to Boston, then landed an Exhibit 10 contract with the Celtics' G League affiliate. He suited up in preseason but never played a regular-season NBA game. Now the NCAA wants to treat him like he's gone forever.
Not so fast.
Unlike the wave of 2022 high school grads fighting for a fifth year, Luis isn't a fifth-year guy. His case is something bigger: a potential freeway for players who signed pro deals and want to come back to the college game — and the millions of dollars that now come with it.
NCAA playing defense, again
The NCAA did grab a win Friday, overturning a federal injunction in Colorado that would have given the 2022 class a blanket fifth year. But on the state level, it keeps getting cooked. And now this.
"I hear that every time we do one of these eligibility cases: 'This is gonna be the end of the NCAA.' That is not true," Elliot Sol Abrams, one of Luis' attorneys, said after the ruling. "The NCAA chose to allow schools to start paying players directly. It made that choice. It could've fought that but it chose not to..."
Translation: The NCAA is trying to draw lines in a playground it built. The judge wasn't having it.
Fellow attorney Tony Clayton, a Baton Rouge DA, kept it simple: "RJ, he doesn't want the cheese. He just wants out of that NCAA trap."
A roster lifeline for Will Wade
This is massive for LSU. Earlier this month, the Tigers had just four players on the official roster. Now, they're adding a former Big East POY — plus former UCLA teammates Donovan Dent and Skyy Clark. If the courts keep cooperating, Wade might actually cook this season.
The NCAA isn't going quietly. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey already filed a court statement against Luis and Kentucky commit Mark Mitchell, who also got cleared over the weekend. And the NCAA famously blocked Charles Bediako from returning to Alabama after he signed multiple pro contracts.
But the tide is shifting. And RJ Luis Jr. is the newest face of it.