Trey Kaufman-Renn NCAA Ruling: Can a Timberwolves Draft Pick Really Return to College?
A player was drafted into the NBA in June. In September, a judge cleared the way for him to play college basketball again. That is where the NCAA’s eligibility rules stand in 2026.
Trey Kaufman-Renn was granted a temporary restraining order against the NCAA in Clark County Circuit Court, opening a path for the former Purdue forward to suit up for a sixth college season. Judge Kyle Williams issued the ruling after limiting the hearing to the TRO question.
Kaufman-Renn was selected No. 59 overall by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the 2026 NBA Draft. According to his attorney, he has not signed a professional contract with Minnesota.
That detail is doing an enormous amount of work here, and it is the reason this case is not a slam dunk for the NCAA to shut down.
He did play. Kaufman-Renn appeared in five NBA Summer League games for the Timberwolves, averaging 6.6 points and 3.8 rebounds. Under any traditional reading of amateurism, participating in an NBA organization’s summer competition after being drafted would end the conversation. That reading has been losing in court repeatedly.
The precedent is fresh. A Louisiana judge granted temporary restraining orders earlier this year allowing several football players to return to college despite having spent time on NFL rosters during training camp. Lane Kiffin brought two of them to LSU, which set off its own round of arguments, though neither played in the opener against Clemson.
Not every case has gone this way. Alabama center Charles Bediako played a handful of games for the Crimson Tide after previously spending time in the G League, and he was later ruled ineligible. The outcomes depend heavily on which court hears the case and how the request is framed.
Kaufman-Renn’s resume is what makes this one matter. He played 147 games at Purdue with 112 starts across a five-year stint that included a lost 2021-22 season due to injury. He earned first-team All-Big Ten honors, and his best year came in 2024-25, when he averaged better than 20 points per game to go with 6.5 rebounds.
That is not a fringe roster addition. That is a legitimate All-America-caliber big man dropping into the college market in September, with the season weeks away. Kaufman-Renn said after the hearing that six or seven schools have already reached out.
You can imagine the bidding. A proven Big Ten scorer with 147 games of experience, available immediately, in an era where NIL money moves fast. Whichever program lands him gets an instant frontcourt upgrade and a headline.
The NCAA’s problem is structural at this point. Every one of these injunctions chips away at the idea that eligibility rules are enforceable, and every favorable ruling encourages the next athlete to file. There is no date yet for a preliminary injunction hearing in this case, which means Kaufman-Renn could conceivably start a season under a temporary order that later gets reversed.
That is a nightmare scenario for a program. Sign the player, build the rotation around him, then lose him midseason to a court reversal, exactly as Alabama did with Bediako.
My honest take is that the NCAA has already lost this fight and simply has not admitted it. Defending five-year clocks and amateurism definitions in front of judges who keep siding with the athletes is not a strategy. It is a delay tactic.
Kaufman-Renn is going to have suitors. The Timberwolves are going to have a strange situation on their hands with a drafted player who never signed. And college basketball is going to open the season with rosters that nobody can be certain are legal.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.