College basketball opens official practice this week with half its blue-blood contenders still waiting on a judge to decide who actually gets to lace them up. I keep staring at that calendar and the same ugly truth keeps staring back: the 2026-27 season is being built on temporary restraining orders and appellate stays, and the teams that looked locked for deep March runs might be pretenders by the time the ball tips.
The NCAA’s June decision on the five-for-five model slammed the door on the high-school class of 2022. No retroactive fifth year. No blanket waiver. Players sued in Ohio, Colorado, Georgia, Tennessee, California, Kentucky, Texas. A Colorado judge handed them a class-wide preliminary injunction. The Tenth Circuit stayed it. Stays followed in Ohio and Georgia. Hearings keep stacking up into late September while practices start and exhibitions looms. Some seniors get to practice. Others sit. The split is pure zip-code justice.
Wade Is Running Out of Bodies and Time
LSU is the purest panic case. Will Wade has an exhibition against McNeese in less than three weeks and a publicly listed roster that sits at four confirmed players. Four. RJ Luis Jr., the former Big East Player of the Year who bounced through multiple two-way NBA deals, remains tangled in the eligibility thicket. Donovan Dent, Mountain West Player of the Year who averaged 20.4 points on his path through New Mexico and UCLA, is in the same holding pattern. Conferences already voted to wall off most former pros; the SEC went unanimous. LSU’s front office is stuck recruiting through the same court dockets everyone else is reading.
I do not care how many late portal flier Wade can still snag. You cannot install chemistry, defensive coverages, or even basic continuity when half your projected rotation is still waiting on a preliminary injunction hearing. The Tigers were supposed to be an SEC climber. Right now they are a science experiment.
Lipsey Is the Difference Between Contender and Also-Ran
Iowa State sits on the other end of the same knife. Tamin Lipsey started 137 career games for the Cyclones, then went undrafted, signed an Exhibit 10 with the Pacers that never got executed, and immediately became the cleanest fifth-year test case in the Big 12. Last season he put up 13.3 points, 5.1 assists, 3.9 rebounds and 2.3 steals with a 3.3-to-1 assist-to-turnover mark. He is the connective tissue T.J. Otzelberger’s roster still needs after losing Joshua Jefferson and Milan Momcilovic.
The defense already projects as a top-five unit with portal pieces Jaquan Johnson and Leon Bond III plus Blake Buchanan and Tre Singleton up front. Sophomore Killyan Toure’s preseason shoulder injury only sharpened the need for another veteran guard. With Lipsey, the Cyclones jump firmly inside the national top 15. Without him they slide toward the 22-to-25 band, a solid but ordinary club whose offense lacks a true fulcrum. One local ruling decides whether Iowa State is a true Final Four threat or just another tough out.
St. John’s is living the same nightmare with four potential starters still unresolved: Quinn Ellis, Keyshawn Hall (19.3 points last season at Auburn), Reed Bailey (8.3 at Indiana), and Babacar Sane. Sane already secured a TRO that lets him practice; his next hearing lands October 1. Rick Pitino cannot build late-game actions around ghosts. Gonzaga, Texas Tech, Missouri, Arizona, Texas A&M, BYU and Oklahoma are all carrying similar question marks into the first week of practice. The transfer portal’s late five-for-five scramble after the Colorado injunction only added more names to the pile before the stays yanked half of them back out.
The Season Is Already Being Decided in Courtrooms
This is the part that should keep every fan of a top-25 program awake. The NCAA has no incentive to issue the blanket waiver the players want. It keeps winning stays. The appeals crawl. By the time some of these cases fully resolve, non-conference schedules will already be half-written and early seeding resumes will already be calcifying. A fifth-year guard who becomes eligible in mid-November is a different player than the one who sat out the entire preseason. A team that spent September practicing 4-on-4 is not the same team that spent it installing full packages.
I am planting the flag now. The programs that clear their limbo players before the first official tip will separate from the ones still fighting TROs in October. Iowa State with Lipsey is a top-15 team that can win the Big 12. Iowa State without him is a good defensive club that bottoms out offensively when the creation dries up. LSU with Luis and Dent is an SEC problem. LSU with four names on the depth chart is a rebuilding year dressed up as a bridge. St. John’s either fields a loaded Pitino roster or spends December explaining why its best pieces were practicing under court order.
The Class of 2022 got squeezed between an old redshirt system and a new five-year clock that deliberately left them outside. Judges are now drawing the lines one docket at a time. Contenders and pretenders will be sorted by which side of those lines their best players land on, not by talent evaluation or portal strategy. Practice starts Monday. The real roster construction is still happening in federal court.
