What’s next for college basketball after a week of eligibility questions, complaints?

Happy New Year, all.

Let’s hope 2026 is full of success, good health … and a lot less chaos in college sports.

1. College basketball’s path ahead

On Christmas Eve, Baylor sent shockwaves across the college basketball landscape by signing James Nnaji, a 21-year-old Nigerian forward who, more notably, was the 31st pick in the 2023 NBA Draft.

An NBA draftee, for the first time in history, is going to play college basketball, potentially as early as Saturday when Baylor plays TCU.

Nnaji being ruled immediately eligible by the NCAA — and given a full four years, at that — is the latest relaxation of the governing body’s once-strict eligibility rules. But over the last several years, those standards have steadily eroded, in no small part because of a growing list of court orders and injunctions — and the fear of more to come. Given the unwieldy amount of money flowing through college sports, anything that limits a player’s eligibility is already walking the tightrope of being an antitrust violation. Nnaji’s situation exemplifies that to a tee, and I highly recommend checking out our deep dive on the subject if you haven’t already.

NCAA president Charlie Baker at least attempted to draw a line in the sand this week, in response to both the Nnaji news and reports teams were interested in signing Chicago Bulls two-way guard Trentyn Flowers, who played NBA minutes in December. Baker said the NCAA will not grant eligibility to anyone who signed an NBA or two-way contract, which feels like a valid line of demarcation.

But if someone brings such a case to court, will the NCAA’s hard line hold up? Impossible to say.

The whole thing, understandably, has long-tenured coaches up in arms, with Tom Izzo, Matt Painter, John Calipari and Dan Hurley spouting off on the subject in the last week. “It’s a frustrating game to play,” Hurley told CBS Sports, “when you don’t know the rules, and rules are being made up as you go, and there’s no communication, and there’s no leadership.”

But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

In speaking to college coaches and stakeholders this week, everyone is convinced that as long as college basketball (and college athletics, more broadly) continues to exist in this nebulous space, the system will continue to break down in real time.

And there are still new frontiers where eligibility rules could be disputed this summer.

First, consider the case of former St. John’s wing RJ Luis Jr., last season’s Big East Player of the Year. Luis entered the transfer portal and the NBA Draft in the spring, before ultimately deciding to go pro instead of returning to college basketball. But then he went undrafted. And while Luis subsequently signed a two-way contract with the Utah Jazz — which puts him in the same off-limits territory as Flowers, according to Baker — what if he instead had tried to come back to college basketball? The NCAA has a bylaw that players who stay in the draft after the withdrawal deadline are forfeiting their remaining eligibility, but can that be litigated, too?

The pool of players who fit that criteria — those who left college early but went undrafted — would be small, but consequential for the college game.

The second frontier involves future foreign players like Nnaji, who get drafted but never sign an NBA contract. Say a player in the Spanish ACB league is drafted in the middle of the second round, but decides to instead play college basketball, where he can make seven figures. The team drafting him would technically retain his rights and could monitor his development, all while the player makes a financial windfall.

As for the coaches trying to build rosters in May, when the NBA Draft isn’t until the last week of June? Good luck!

Only two real options exist for charting a stable path forward. The NCAA has tried the first — Congressional intervention and an antitrust exemption — to no avail. As one high-major coach put it to me this week, how is Congress going to know how to fix college sports when even the NCAA doesn’t know how?

The second option, one that is increasingly gaining traction amongst coaches (and those who live the sport every day): collective bargaining, and an entirely new model of college sports in which players are deemed employees.

Aside from the massive infrastructural costs schools would incur to build out that framework, it would strip the NCAA of any real or perceived power it has left, and throw the entire college sports system (at least temporarily) into chaos. There are also numerous questions about how it would work across different conferences, different sports and different states, with different labor laws.

But until we get a larger resolution, coaches seeking to keep their jobs and win games will continue to find loopholes — and push the envelope — on talent acquisition. And as the past week proved, who’s stopping them?

2. New Year’s resolutions for top teams

And as I keep telling my wife, let’s try to be realistic here. (No, sweetie, you’re probably not going to read two books a month if you didn’t finish one all of 2025.)

BYU: Get past the slow starts

Kevin Young’s team doesn’t play any of the Big 12’s other five best teams — Arizona, Houston, Iowa State, Kansas and Texas Tech — until Jan. 17, giving the Cougars time to correct their biggest shortcoming: slow starts. That was most palpable against UConn and Clemson, when the Cougars fell behind by 11 and 21 points, respectively, in the first half of those games. For BYU to then only lose by 2 to the Huskies — and to complete the program’s largest second-half comeback against the Tigers — speaks to this team’s Final Four upside. But it’ll be exceptionally hard to make noise in the Big 12 and the NCAA Tournament if the Cougars keep putting themselves in such humongous holes.

Duke: Find more open looks for Isaiah Evans

Last season, Duke wing Isaiah Evans ranked 15th amongst all high-major players, and 42nd in Division-I, in spot-up shooting, per Synergy. Evans averaged a staggering 1.414 points per possession (PPP) on those looks and made 48.3 percent of his 3s. But this season, while Evans is contributing more defensively and as a secondary ballhandler, his shooting splits have sagged — and his shot profile may help explain why. Entering Duke’s 85-79 win over Georgia Tech on Wednesday, Evans had only attempted 20 spot-up 3s all season, making just six, but the difference between his contested and uncontested attempts is stark.

Evans has made 36.4 percent of his open spot-up attempts and only 22.2 percent of his contested ones. Not exactly breaking news here, but there’s a biiiiiig difference between shots like these:

And ones like these:

Evans didn’t suddenly become a mediocre shooter, and although he is only making 33.3 percent of his 3s, prioritizing where he gets his shots has to be a focus for the Blue Devils entering ACC play. When Jon Scheyer talks about being able to help his players more, this is what he means.

North Carolina: Reassess the perimeter rotation with Seth Trimble back

Hubert Davis’ early Christmas present was senior guard Seth Trimble — UNC’s best perimeter player — returning just before the holiday layoff after missing nine games with a broken left forearm. And Trimble has mostly picked back up where he left off, averaging 16.3 points, 4.3 rebounds and 3.3 assists in three games since returning. That’s good news, but Trimble rejoining the rotation means everyone else on the perimeter — including reserves Derek Dixon and Jonathan Powell, the biggest beneficiaries of Trimble’s absence — needs a new role definition.

Dixon and Powell deserve to be rotation regulars, at minimum, the rest of the year, but so do Kyan Evans and Luka Bogavac, who started alongside Trimble the last three games. Evans thrived in more of an off-ball role Tuesday against Florida State, making a season-high five 3s, and I’d expect Davis to toy more with that moving forward, but UNC’s next few weeks should entail plenty of experimentation with different perimeter combinations.

UConn: Defend at the same level without fouling

After beating Xavier 90-67 on Wednesday, UConn (13-1) ranks second in adjusted defensive efficiency, per KenPom. (Hurley’s two title teams finished their championship seasons seventh and fourth, so this year’s squad is in good company.) Part of the reason UConn’s defense is so good — top-15 nationally in 2-point and 3-point defense — is because of its physicality. Center Tarris Reed sets that tone as a 6-foot-11, 265-pound force down low, but UConn’s perimeter players are just as aggressive at the point of attack.

The inherent downside to that approach is a tendency to be foul prone … which UConn is. The Huskies rank 291st nationally in defensive foul rate, which is the third-worst of any high-major team. Of the Huskies’ nine rotation players, their two most foul-prone are their top two freshmen: wing Braylon Mullins and center Eric Reibe. If Hurley can coach those two up like he has with Reed — who is committing 1.7 fewer fouls per 40 minutes than last season — then UConn should be able to improve its lone vulnerability.

3. A welcome first weekend of full-blown conference play

I’ll gladly bring my 9-6 record on game picks into the new year, and hopefully stay above .500 on the first full weekend of conference play:

No. 9 Michigan State (12-1) at No. 13 Nebraska (13-0) (Friday, 9 p.m. ET, Peacock): Nebraska takes nearly half its shots — 49.3 percent, to be exact, a top-25 rate nationally — from 3, while Michigan State allows opponents to take 46.3 percent of their attempts from deep, the sixth-highest rate ceded by any high-major team. Translation: The Huskers are going to be firing from deep. Fred Hoiberg’s team is capable of converting at a high clip — like when it made 12 triples en route to beating Illinois at the buzzer — but it hasn’t seen a defense like Michigan State’s yet, at least in terms of physicality. The pick: Michigan State

No. 19 Tennessee (10-3) at No. 18 Arkansas (10-3) (Saturday, 3 p.m. ET, ESPN2): A classic strength-versus-strength matchup. Tennessee’s defense is never going to be bad under Rick Barnes, but this season’s version isn’t quite as ruthless as recent iterations. Arkansas’ offense, meanwhile, can hang with anyone, especially when Trevon Brazile is at his best, but is prone to bouts of inefficiency. This could go either way, but in what should be a one- or two-possession game, I’ll side with the home team. The pick: Arkansas

No. 21 Virginia (11-2) at NC State (10-4) (Saturday, 11 a.m. ET, ESPN2): Will Wade’s postgame news conferences may not make it sound like it, but recent wins over Ole Miss and Wake Forest have stabilized the Wolfpack, largely thanks to newfound defensive effort. That said, Virginia’s biggest strengths — 3-point shooting and offensive rebounding — are the exact things NC State’s defense struggles the most with, making this a bad matchup for NC State. On paper, Virginia probably has the advantage, but it seems like Wade might be figuring some things out. The pick: NC State

Kentucky (9-4) at No. 14 Alabama (10-3) (Saturday, 12 p.m. ET, ESPN): As the St. John’s game made evident, Kentucky is an entirely different team when it gets contributions from Jaland Lowe and Jayden Quaintance. But I’m still far from sold on Kentucky’s offense, especially its ability to keep up with the likes of Alabama, which has been one of the nation’s most potent offenses (per usual) under Nate Oats. The Cats are improving, but this is a really tough first SEC road game. The pick: Alabama

Auburn (9-4) at No. 23 Georgia (12-1) (Saturday, 1 p.m. ET, SEC Network): Georgia’s record is slightly misleading in that the Bulldogs only played one top-50 nonconference opponent, Clemson … who they lost to in overtime. But Mike White’s team is certainly intriguing, playing at one of the fastest paces in the country while dominating inside with an army of forwards. Auburn is probably the more talented team, but the Tigers have looked woefully outmatched defensively against almost all of the quality competition they’ve faced. The pick: Georgia