Alabama basketball received some expected news on Wednesday. The Crimson Tide’s NIL collective, Yea Alabama, announced that Houston Mallette’s medical redshirt was granted, and he’ll be allowed to return for one final season in Tuscaloosa.

Mallette, who transferred in before the 2024-25 season from Pepperdine, was originally slated to redshirt the entire year. However, when Latrell Wrightsell Jr. injured his Achilles tendon and was out for the year, Alabama burned the redshirt.

However, lingering knee issues led to Nate Oats and company seeking the medical redshirt for Mallette.

“For him to only play half the conference games would be, I don’t know if that’s fair to him to be honest with you,” Oats said in January. “It’s gonna be a conversation we have with him when he gets here, probably halfway through where, “Look, how are your knees feeling?’

“Because if you bring him back, it’s gotta be, your knees are going to 100% be healthy and you can full go as many minutes as you deserve to play the rest of the year in all the games. If you can’t do that, with his knees, I just don’t think it’d be the right decision.”

Mallette and Wrightsell are both set to return from their injuries in time for the beginning of the 2025-26 season, Oats said earlier in May. Speaking to reporters at the Regions Tradition celebrity pro-am golf tournament, the coach said Wrightsell had been working with Crimson Tide trainer Clarke Holter.

“He’s in there; Clarke says he’s working super-hard,” Oats said of Wrightsell, who was averaging 11.5 points per game at the time of his injury. “He’s doing everything he needs to do, so we anticipate him being fully ready to go by first game.”

Leading the group is three-time honoree McKenna Mulholland who recently completed her redshirt junior season with the Cardinals.

 

Seniors Kaitlyn Gibson and Maddie Weaver earned the honor for the second time in their careers, while the Ball State also had five first-time selections in graduate student McKayla Timmons, redshirt junior Hayley Urban, sophomore Maia Pietrzak, redshirt freshman Payton Fox and redshirt freshman Veronica Peitersen.

 

A total of 96 student-athletes earned the Academic All-MAC distinction in softball by maintaining at least a 3.2 GPA and participating in at least half of the team’s contests for the season.

First-year students and any college transfers in their first year of residence are not eligible for the award.

Right at the buzzer, Otega Oweh came up clutch for Kentucky — just as he did for the Wildcats on multiple occasions during his debut season in Lexington. No, it wasn’t a game-winner against Oklahoma in Norman, or again against the Sooners in the SEC Tournament. This time, it was announcing his decision to return for his senior year in blue and white, pulling his name out of the draft ahead of the 11:59 p.m. ET withdrawal deadline. With workouts scheduled through May 28 beyond his time at the NBA Draft Combine in Chicago earlier this month, Oweh saw the process through, receiving all of the feedback he could get his hands on before deciding to run it back as a Wildcat.

What does that decision mean for Kentucky going into year two under Mark Pope? We know the team will be good, but how good? KSR breaks down the return of Tega-Tron.

Kentucky can win a title with this roster

As the pieces started coming together, it didn’t take long to see the vision. The Wildcats had talent last season, but lacked physicality, toughness and athleticism, and Pope quickly went out of his way to improve the roster in those areas while continuing to prioritize positional versatility with shot-making potential at every spot on the floor. Maybe no Koby Breas — generational shooters are generational for a reason — but zero non-shooters in sight.

And depth. Lots and lots of depth. Worried about a player or three losing a wheel, an unfortunate reality the team faced last year? Kentucky’s got a dozen others ready to play.

Oweh was the final piece of that puzzle and the glue ready to hold it all together. The complementary fits were all there, waiting for that star and face to anchor the lineup. It would have been a solid team without the All-SEC guard, but was it capable of making a championship run? That’s a question the Wildcats will fortunately not have to answer with his return.

Is this the most expensive team in college basketball?

Pope joked that Kentucky’s NIL budget was “close to $200 million” earlier this month, holding back a belly laugh when asked to address some of the numbers thrown around in connection with his roster. He wasn’t going to play ball there, but he did make it clear the program deserves the best of the best. The winningest program in college basketball should have the best talent and the money it takes to build championship rosters in this climate.

“This is the University of Kentucky. I never forget that. We should be the best at everything,” Pope said. “Put NIL, put the transfer portal on the list. Our job is to go be the best at everything. We’re not shying away from that. It’s important to us.”

Otega Oweh’s decision is the best example of Kentucky’s healthy NIL situation yet. He could have entered the transfer portal as a potential face of college basketball and Preseason All-American in 2025-26, going to the highest bidder as one of the sport’s top earners next season. He’s a name-your-price, blank-check talent, but didn’t even think to explore the open market. Instead, it was UK or the NBA.

Had those NIL conversations gone poorly — take Denzel Aberdeen’s unexpected move from Florida to Kentucky, for example — we’re likely talking about finding Oweh’s replacement right now, whether he had kept his name in the draft or pursued other options in the portal. Instead, the folks in Lexington made it more than worth his while to return, just as they have for the rest of this absolutely loaded roster.

Prepare for a second-year jump

Now that Oweh is back, the conversation turns toward what he can be in year two under Pope. If you ask the man in charge, this is typically when his players make the biggest jump, moving past learning the system and focusing on individual development.

“My guys in their second year take a massive leap,” Pope said. “We’re such a read-based offense, and in parts defense, where our guys are the deciders on the floor. They’re not looking over at me. We coach them to coach each other and communicate with each other.

“So, with a year under your belt now, now you’re coming in not to learn the game or do the game, but you come in actually starting to play the game and trick up the game and use all these actions and manipulate them in creative ways. And that’s where the game gets incredibly fun. So these second-year guys are going to be really key for us.”

That’s a game-changer for Kentucky and a problem for the rest of college basketball. Oweh was already the team’s leading scorer at 16.2 points per game while adding 4.7 rebounds (second-best on the team), 1.7 assists and 1.6 steals (best on the team) on 49/78/36 splits. If that’s the worst version we’ll see of Tega-Tron as a Wildcat, what does the best look like?

A clear path to first-round status

Oweh was already receiving  ‘really, really good feedback’ from NBA teams ahead of the withdrawal deadline, outperforming some of the early draft projections that had him fighting for second-round status. Most had him going undrafted, ESPN’s latest update listing the 6-4 guard as the No. 72 overall prospect in the field.

Fortunately for the Kentucky star — and part of why a return to Lexington made sense — there is an obvious path to solidifying himself as a first-round pick in 2026. His floor is already unbelievably high, Pope singling out his ‘elite’ physicality and explosiveness already, ‘as good as you’re going to find’ among current draft-eligible players.

Then you factor in the upside with ‘so much room to grow,’ as he put it.

“I think his ceiling as a playmaker, he hasn’t even begun to tap into that. I think he can become an elite, elite-level playmaker,” Pope said. “Something that he’s talked a lot about is his ability to get his shot off more quickly. He shot the ball really well last year at 36, 37 percent from three, but to get it off quicker and get more attempts, I think is a big deal for him. On the defensive end, his ability to kind of neutralize bigs on the glass and bigs on switches is a place where he can really excel. I think he has a chance to grow into one of the elite steals guys in the country.

“He’s got a ton of room to grow. He’s an unbelievable player who had a great season last year. It’s pretty fun to talk about.”

It was pretty fun to talk about those possibilities as Oweh tested the draft waters and explored the possibility of a return to Kentucky. Now that it’s official, there aren’t many things more fun to talk about than what year two of Tega-Tron looks like and just how good the Wildcats can be in 2025-26.

Welcome back, OO. Time to hang banner No. 9.

Georgia head football coach Kirby Smart is now taking on college collectives for alleged unscrupulous recruiting efforts involving high school prospects.

Smart opened up about the issue Wednesday, revealing to Yahoo! Sports that collegiate-based collectives “are striking deals with high school recruits” and paying “as much as $20,000” per month to keep their commitments, according to Yahoo! Sports‘ Ross Dellenger. Smart added that if a prep prospect de-commits from that collective’s school, they’re being asked to return their compensation, per Dellenger.

The head coach at Georgia complaining about high school recruits being held to their prior commitments is interesting given how often smaller programs with fewer resources — especially with regard to NIL — complain about major Power Four programs poaching their commitments with more favorable financial offers.

Still, collectives adding a recurring financial incentive in order to secure a high school player’s commitment — many of which come months if not years before they’re able to officially sign with a program — only highlights the free-wheeling ways many schools are taking advantage of the current unregulated NIL market prior to the finalization of the House v. NCAA settlement.

While the Power Four conferences prepare for the post-House landscape, the multi-billion-dollar settlement still needs to be formally approved by California district court Judge Claudia Ann Wilken, which could come anytime, according to On3’s Pete Nakos.

Report: NCAA to cede enforcement to new organization upon House settlement approval

If approved, the House v. NCAA settlement would pave the way for revenue-sharing between NCAA schools and student-athletes, with some programs able to share roughly $20.5 million annually, or 22-percent of the average Power Four school’s annual revenue, along with approximately $2.75 billion in back damages to former college athletes over a 10-year span. Football programs are expected to receive as much as 75-percent of each school’s revenue allotment, followed by men’s basketball (15%), women’s basketball (5%) and the remainder of sports (5%).

The settlement, which was recently revised at Wilken’s request, would also mean strict roster limits in football (105), men’s and women’s basketball (15), baseball (34), softball (25), men’s and women’s soccer (28) and volleyball (18), though the revised plan allows for grandfathering in of all current student-athletes and any that were preemptively cut before the settlement was finalized.

Last week, ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported the development of the College Sports Commission, a new collegiate enforcement arm that would effectively replace the NCAA, establish and uphold new compliance rules while also doling out punishment for all violators. The CSC’s new CEO is expected to come from outside college athletics, according to ESPN, with the expectation a hire could be made soon after the House v. NCAA settlement is finalized.

“All the institutions are going to have new membership agreements that we’re all agreeing to these new rules,” an industry source told ESPN. “The CEO is going to have responsibility to make sure everything is enforced and the governance model is sound. It’s a critically important role for the future of college sports and college football.”

— On3’s Nick Schultz and Pete Nakos contributed to this report.

J. Kyle Mann is joined by Tate Frazier from One Shining Podcast as they discuss the ongoing debate over evaluating players based on their physical tools versus their game tape, NIL’s effect on the NBA draft, the upside for some of the players who decided to return to school, Michigan’s portal haul, and whether Florida can still be an elite team (02:25). Next, they dive into the Charlotte Hornets, as Tate explains why they should draft Tre Johnson, Brandon Miller’s role with the franchise, and whether it’s time to move on from LaMelo Ball (31:22).

Check out The Ringer’s 2025 NBA Draft Guide for all the latest prospect rankings, draft grades, and more!

Host: J. Kyle Mann
Guest: Tate Frazier
Producer: Jessie Lopez
Additional Production Support: Ben Cruz
Social: Keith Fujimoto