BLOOMINGTON — Former Indiana center Sam Alexis was one of several college athletes to win a fifth year of eligibility Friday, via an injunction awarded in Tennessee district court.
The ruling opens the door for Alexis to play a fifth and final season of college basketball. Whether that is with Indiana remains to be seen.
Alexis’ intentions remained unclear as of Friday night, per a source. IU declined comment when contacted about the possibility at that time.
The injunction in question represents a legal win for athletes who, like Alexis, played four years of college sports and are seeking to be grandfathered into a fifth year, after the NCAA changed its rules this summer to grant all athletes five years to play five.
That change does away with the longstanding redshirt rule and adds a potential fifth year of competitive eligibility to an athlete’s clock, while also eliminating virtually all waivers and exceptions. Athletes who graduated last spring having finished four competitive seasons over just four years have argued they should receive a fifth year as well, something the NCAA has so far resisted.
Friday’s news carved a path for those athletes to potentially play that fifth and final college season.
Prominent attorney Darren Heitner posted on X Friday that “a preliminary injunction order after a full hearing is a game-changer. And now we have that in Ohio and Tennessee.”
“The NCAA should read the writing on the wall,” Heitner, who represented the plaintiffs, including Alexis, in the Tennessee case, continued. “Give the 2022 class the eligibility it deserves.”
Also on Friday, a district court judge in Colorado granted a “class-wide preliminary injunction” to all high school class-of-2022 athletes “who exhausted four seasons of eligibility this spring,” challenging the same rule. Together, the rulings could force the NCAA’s hand, and give athletes like Alexis one final year in college.
Whether Alexis would elect to spend such a year in Bloomington remains to be seen. Connections between player and program are not hard to make, however.
Indiana retains one open scholarship for the 2026-27 season, a move coach Darian DeVries admitted earlier this week he made intentionally to give him roster flexibility. Alexis would seem to fill a need for the Hoosiers, who are intent upon playing bigger lineups this season but currently only have two experienced centers — Alabama transfer Aiden Sherrell and SMU transfer Samet Yigitoglu — in Bloomington.
And Alexis joined what for the moment anyway is his former team earlier this month in Peru, where he competed as part of Team USA (Indiana put on red, white and blue for international competition) in the FISU America Games.
It remained unclear as of Friday night whether all this might prompt a reunion between IU and Alexis, who transferred to Indiana from Florida in 2025. Both the connection and the opportunity, for both player and program, are not hard to see.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Sam Alexis has a 5th-year of eligibility, what we know about ex-Indiana center’s plans
Reporting by Zach Osterman, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Zach Osterman, Indianapolis Star | USA TODAY Network
