A Nebraska district court has added another setback for the NCAA’s eligibility rules, this time in a case involving Omaha basketball player Isaac Ondekane.
Earlier this month, 4th Judicial District Douglas County judge Katie Benson granted Ondekane an injunction that allows him to return to the Mavericks for one more season. Ondekane, a former JUCO player, had already gained an extra year of eligibility through the Diego Pavia ruling. He was also injured in preseason last year and did not play a minute for Omaha in the 2025-26 season.
The dispute centered on the NCAA’s decision to deny his hardship waiver request for this past season. Ondekane argued he should be eligible for an additional “Pavia” year, but the NCAA rejected that claim. The Omaha court sided with him.
“Ondekane has shown he is likely to succeed on the merits of his claim that the NCAA’s refusal to consider him for a medical “hardship waiver” was a breach of its duty of good faith and fair dealing,” Benson wrote in her opinion. “Because Ondekane faces irreparable harm without a temporary injunction, and because the balance of equities and public interest favor granting an injunction to this seriously injured student athlete, the Court grants Ondekane’s motion for a temporary injunction while litigation continues.”
The order also bars the NCAA from “restricting, penalizing, or otherwise interfering with” Ondekane’s participation with the Mavs, “including but not limited to practice,conditioning, training, scrimmages, exhibition games, regular-season competition, postseason competition, and all other countable athletically related activities.”
The ruling lands in the same broader pattern of state courts stepping in against NCAA eligibility decisions, even if it differs from the court decision that let Brendan Sorsby move past punishment for gambling on his own team. It also resembles that case in one key way: the judge has effectively boxed the NCAA out of interfering with the player’s participation.
The Nebraska decision is one more sign that courts are willing to challenge the NCAA’s old eligibility framework. It also helps explain why the NCAA shifted to the 5-for-5 eligibility rules, which are designed to avoid dealing with waivers, hardships and redshirt seasons.
Even so, the source of the next challenge is easy to imagine. A player in a situation like Nebraska basketball’s Jamarques Lawrence could eventually argue for another year because of the rule change. And based on the way these cases have gone, it’s hard to picture the courts lining up with the NCAA.
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USA TODAYs evaluation points straight at the trenches, where Nebraskas line play on both sides of the ball remains the clearest test of whether Rhule can push the program higher. The offense and defense both had stretches that undercut the bigger picture, even with Emmett Johnson producing a standout rushing season, and the late-season issues gave the ranking a harsher edge. Nebraska now turns the page toward Sept. 5, when it opens 2026 at Memorial Stadium against Ohio on FS1. [Read more 🡒]