Mark Mitchell Is Ineligible Again After a Kentucky Appeals Court Dissolved the Injunction That Cleared Him
Mark Mitchell averaged 18.3 points for Missouri last season, won a court case in August to get a fifth year of eligibility, and on Friday lost it.
The Kentucky Court of Appeals dissolved the temporary injunction that had cleared him and roughly 37 other athletes to play in 2026-27. Mitchell is immediately ineligible.
The ruling
The order itself was four words long in substance: “The August 21, 2026 Order is DISSOLVED.”
The appeals court explained its jurisdiction briefly. “Upon review, we deny the respondents’ motions because the circuit court’s order was indeed a temporary injunction.”
That is the whole hinge. The athletes argued the Jefferson Circuit Court’s order was something other than a temporary injunction, which would have changed what the appeals court could do with it. The court disagreed, and once it was labeled a temporary injunction it was dissolvable.
What the fight is actually about
At issue is the NCAA’s new eligibility framework, adopted by the Division I Cabinet in June 2026 and known as “5-in-5.” It creates a continuous five-year window tied to enrollment and age, replacing the old standard of five calendar years to play four seasons.
Athletes from the class of 2022 have been challenging it in courts around the country. A nationwide preliminary injunction came from U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney in Colorado on July 31, 2026 in Wisne v. NCAA. The Kentucky case began with 13 athletes and grew, and the NCAA named 38 respondents in a motion filed September 1.
This is the first time an appellate court has reversed one of these orders. That is why it matters well beyond one player.
Mitchell’s road here has been strange
Get the school right, because a lot of outlets have not. Mitchell plays for Missouri.
He was at Duke from 2022 to 2024, transferred to Missouri for 2024 through 2026, committed to Kentucky in August 2026 after winning the injunction, then decommitted about two weeks later and returned to Missouri under Dennis Gates.
He is 23, a 6-foot-9 forward out of Kansas City, Kansas, who came through Bishop Miege and then Sunrise Christian Academy as a five-star recruit by some services and a four-star by others.
Last season at Missouri he played 33 games and averaged 18.3 points, 5.2 rebounds and 3.6 assists on 54.7 percent shooting, earning third-team All-SEC honors with a career-high 31 against Alabama. He went undrafted in the 2026 NBA Draft and played Summer League with Denver without landing a contract.
What happens next
A hearing is reported for October 9. Missouri opens the season November 3 against Cleveland State, so there is a window in which Mitchell could seek new injunctive relief, possibly in Missouri courts rather than Kentucky ones.
Venue shopping has been the whole strategy in these cases, and it has worked often enough that nobody should assume Friday is the end.
Mitchell would have been one of only six returning players on a 17-man Missouri roster. Losing an 18-point scorer and third-team all-conference forward three weeks before the opener is a program-altering problem.
No on-record comment has come from Mitchell, Gates or Missouri.
Our take
This is an unsustainable way to run a sport. Dozens of rosters nationally were assembled around players whose eligibility rests on temporary restraining orders obtained in whichever courthouse looked most receptive, and now an appellate court has started knocking them down one at a time.
Missouri football defensive tackle Sterling Webb got a restraining order in July and has played four games. Mitchell got one in August and will not play at all unless he finds another judge.
Same rule, same year, different outcomes based on filing address. The NCAA needs a court to settle this at a level that binds everybody, and it needs it before November.
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.
