Arizona, North Carolina, Tennessee and Gonzaga among teams adding to their rosters after court ruling


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UConn coach Dan Hurley took some time the other day to bemoan the fact that some of his colleagues in college basketball are eagerly adding players this August after a federal judge in Colorado granted what amounts to a blanket waiver for athletes who graduated high school with the Class of 2022 to get a fifth year of eligibility.

"You can't act like it's not a victimless situation," Hurley said. "I mean, there are kids that are 17, 18 years old that potentially may lose out on opportunities. So it's not victimless. At some point, you've got to care about the sport, especially if the sport has given you a lot."

Unsurprisingly, not everybody cares about the sport in this way. Arizona, North Carolina, Tennessee and Gonzaga are just a few of the prominent programs that have added fifth-year players in recent weeks. Plenty more will join them soon, regardless of whether Hurley approves or not. It's the latest reminder that what most coaches deep down believe is right and wrong matters little when presented with an opportunity to improve their rosters; most do not practice what they preach. Case in point, if you polled college coaches and asked whether they believe professionals should be allowed in college basketball, most would say no. But two seconds after they tell you that, a decent percentage of them would eagerly hop on a plane to Europe in hopes of securing a commitment from a professional, and then they would rationalize it by explaining how they still think it's wrong and don't really want to do it, but if everybody else is going to do it, well, you know, they don't really have a choice.

Anyway ...

These recent roster-developments are why we're now up to Version 22 of the 2026-27 CBS Sports Preseason Top 25 And 1 college basketball rankings. Among the movers is Gonzaga, which has added two fifth-year players in the past week -- namely Javon Bennett and Chauncey Wiggins. Bennett averaged 15.8 points and 2.9 assists last season for a Dayton team that won 25 games while Wiggins averaged 13.3 points and 3.9 rebounds for a Florida State team that finished 62nd at KenPom.com. Their additions have the Zags up to No. 11 in the Top 25 And 1, where Florida remains No. 1 based on a projection that the Gators will return six of the top seven scorers -- specifically Thomas Haugh, Alex Condon, Boogie Fland, Rueben Chinyelu, Urban Klavzar and Isaiah Brown -- from a team that won the SEC by three games and was a No. 1 seed in the 2026 NCAA Tournament. That experienced and talented core is expected to be rejoined by Denzel Aberdeen, who played three years with the Gators and helped them win the 2025 NCAA Tournament before spending last season at Kentucky, where he started 35 times for Mark Pope's team that advanced to the second round of the 2026 NCAA Tournament.

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