Darrion Williams gave Wolfpack Nation something to chew on this week when he posted an Instagram story of himself, Paul McNeil Jr. and Eemeli Yalaho sitting down for dinner.
The caption was simple: “Dinner with the Fellas.” The reaction around NC State was anything but.
Williams, who led the Wolfpack with 14 points per game last season, has become part of a bigger conversation as the NCAA eligibility picture gets murkier by the day. Over the past week, graduating seniors from the class of 2022 were granted an extra year of eligibility by a Colorado judge, and that decision has opened the door to a pile of unanswered questions.
One of the messier possibilities is that the injunction gets upheld, but players are still tied to their previous schools. That would create a strange setup for athletes who were told by agents to enter the transfer portal after the season in case this exact situation happened. The assumption is that portal entries would count if the players are granted another year, but there’s no clear rule for that, and it’s unclear who would even have the final say.
If those portal entries are ruled invalid because the players had no eligibility left when they entered, the fallout gets even trickier. Players who never entered the portal could be stuck at their schools while others get a chance to move, simply because they filed paperwork before a rule existed. On the other side, if the players are deemed eligible but their April portal entries are tossed out, they could argue that their earning potential is being restricted.
That’s where the real headache starts. Do players get locked to their current schools?
Do roster limits change? Does a new portal window open?
Do only the players who entered in April get to move? None of that has been settled, and that uncertainty is exactly why the ruling has created so much chaos.
Which brings us back to Raleigh.
The photo itself appears to have been taken at Raleigh Times Bar off Hargett Street. The restaurant is upstairs, behind the staircase leading to the rooftop deck.
There are a few clues that point to that location: the same bannister, the same wall, and the air duct in the upper-right corner line up with an older photo from the same angle on the Raleigh Times Bar Instagram page. In the newer image, a newspaper clipping is also visible, and while it’s too pixelated to read clearly, Gov.
Cooper and “NC Courage Players” can be made out.
There’s also the timing. Yalaho is in the photo, and he just joined the team this summer, which makes it clear this isn’t some old image being used to stir things up.
Still, the dinner set off plenty of speculation because Williams does have ties to the people in the picture. He’s friends with Yalaho and RJ Keene, and the three vacationed together this offseason. Yalaho played his freshman season at Texas Tech in 2023-24, while Williams was there during his first season after transferring from Nevada.
Williams is also listed in the NC lawsuit, along with Tre Holloman and Ven-Allen Lubin, as one of the 50 athletes. That case is expected to be heard this week.
None of that means a return to NC State is around the corner, and the Wolfpack are already pretty set at the 4. But in August, with eligibility chaos swirling and a dinner photo making the rounds, people were always going to talk.
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