Honor Huff has won a key legal battle that clears the way for him to be eligible for the 2026-27 men’s college basketball season.
A Monongalia County circuit court ruling filed Wednesday shows Judge Cindy Scott granted Huff’s request for a preliminary injunction and rejected the NCAA’s bid to stay the decision while it appeals. Huff filed the injunction motion last month as he prepares to enter the transfer portal.
Scott’s order says, “Honor Huff is permitted to compete for available roster positions at any NCAA Division I member institution during the 2026-27 academic year without the NCAA regarding that participation as a violation of its eligibility rules,”
The ruling means the NCAA cannot block Huff from competing for roster spots at Division I schools, and it cannot treat that participation as an eligibility violation. It also prevents the NCAA from using the Rule of Restitution, the provision that could have allowed the organization to challenge the case, declare Huff ineligible and then penalize any school that played him.
Huff had been seeking an extra year after playing four seasons in five years. His argument centered on the season he sat out in 2022-23, saying he should not be punished after a later NCAA rule change allowed athletes to compete in five seasons.
His path started at VMI before he transferred to Chattanooga. Because the two schools are in the Southern Conference, the conference rulebook required an intraconference transfer to sit out a season.
Huff said he made that move “unaware that the NCAA would later adopt a new eligibility rule that permitted athletes to participate in five seasons of competition” and that he “would have evaluated his decisions differently” if he had known the rules would change.
He first asked for a waiver when he transferred to Chattanooga, but that request was denied. After finishing his fifth year and fourth season at West Virginia in 2026, he sought another waiver. That one was denied as well.
In deciding whether to grant the injunction, Scott weighed whether Huff would face irreparable harm without it, whether the NCAA would be harmed by it, the likelihood Huff would win on the merits and the public interest.
Scott said the public interest favored the injunction because of “administering athlete eligibility for college sports in a way that is not arbitrary or harmful to student-athletes and consistency in eligibility determinations for athletes with similar circumstances.” She also said Huff faced a “high risk” of irreparable harm without the order, while the NCAA would not be harmed because the case involves only one student-athlete with unique circumstances tied to a rule specific to intraconference transfer athletes.
Scott also wrote that Huff’s breach of contract claim was “likely to succeed,” adding, “The Court further finds that it is unreasonable not to afford exceptions to student-athletes like Plaintiff who made decisions about their collegiate athletic careers not knowing that the NCAA would later change the eligibility rules in a way that makes that decision consequential and at the same time terminate any waiver remedies previously afforded student-athletes,”
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