The NCAA wanted Babacar Sane gone on August 13. Instead he is a St. John’s co-captain, and he will lace up for Monmouth on November 2 with the injunction still live. The waiting is not suspense. It is the association bleeding time it already lost.
Judge Karina E. Alomar sat through Monday’s arguments in Queens Supreme Court, reserved decision, and then asked Sane’s lawyers if they wanted witnesses at a later date. Elliot Sol Abrams and Kareem R. Vessup said yes. The NCAA did not object. Second hearing: November 9. Until then the temporary restraining order holds, which means the 6-foot-8 forward can work the three exhibitions and the first two regular-season games, Iona included on November 8.
“He can play,” Abrams said by phone after the hearing. “The injunction remains in effect. The injunction protects St. John’s from playing him.” That is the whole ballgame right now. The season starts with Sane on the floor and the NCAA still drafting memos.
Ruben Prey Practices Every Day. Explain That.
Rick Pitino already wrote the brief that should end this. In his affidavit he put the contradiction in plain English: “Ruben Prey plays for us. He was paid to play for Joventut Badalona in the Spanish ACB before he came to Queens. He practices with us every day, and nobody at the NCAA has ever suggested to me that there is anything wrong with that.”
Same gym. Same program. Same coach. Prey got the green light. Sane got the hammer. Pitino did not stop there. “I recruit internationally, and I have for a long time. Recruiting a young man who has been paid to play somewhere else is ordinary now, and until this case I had no reason to think the association treated it as a problem.” Ordinary until the Eligibility Center decided this particular Senegalese forward was the line.
The NCAA’s case, as quoted in the court filings, is not imaginary. It cites 157 contests on seven professional teams over four seasons, an Exhibit 10 deal with the Utah Jazz, and four agreements that paid him above actual and necessary expenses. That is a real resume. If you want the strongest honest defense of the denial, there it is: this guy lived as a pro longer than most college seniors have lived as adults.
Then explain the rest of the filing. Sane’s lawsuit points to at least 90 other men’s basketball players with significant pro experience the NCAA cleared, including former G League Ignite teammates London Johnson and Thierry Darlan, plus James Nnaji. The selective enforcement is the story. Appeal success rates in these cases run brutal; one filing put it at 1 in 41. When the process is that stacked, the courtroom becomes the only real venue, and a New York judge just invited live witnesses into it.
November 9 Arrives After the Tip-Offs That Matter
Pitino did not recruit a finished product and pretend otherwise. “Babacar is not a finished basketball player. That is the whole reason to come to college. He came here to get better, and player development is what I have done for fifty years. He also wants a college education.” St. John’s backed that with a revenue-sharing and NIL package north of $1 million for 2026-27, more than Sane’s total pro earnings. That is the modern trade: college money and development over another German BBL season averaging roughly 10 points a night.
Naming him co-captain alongside Ian Jackson before the hearing was not a press-release stunt. It was Pitino telling the locker room and the court the same thing: this roster is built with Sane in it. Keyshawn Hall‘s eligibility matter is still pending too. St. John’s is living inside the NCAA’s enforcement maze in real time, and the only people acting certain are the ones wearing red.
The counter will keep coming that rules are rules and four paid seasons cross a bright line. Fine. Then the association needs one coherent standard that survives Prey on the practice floor and ninety other cleared pros in the database. Right now it has neither. Delaying to November 9 with witnesses looks less like careful judging and more like the NCAA hoping the calendar does work the TRO cannot.
Sane steps on the floor November 2 as a co-captain under court protection. By the time the witnesses testify on the 9th, St. John’s will already have game tape of the player the association tried to erase in August. The eligibility fight is no longer theoretical. It is a season that started without the NCAA’s permission.
