Wake Forest Athletics Photo
What seemed like an easy transfer waiver to grant for Olivier Sarr to play at Kentucky certainly has got complicated. Kentucky fans kept wondering what was taking the NCAA so long to grant his waiver request. He left Wake Forest after coach Danny Manning was fired just before the original deadline for underclassmen like Sarr — he had just finished his junior season — to put names into the NBA draft.
Wake Forest officials seemed on board with the transfer. Kentucky coach John Calipari said several times he expects Sarr to be eligible and if he is, Kentucky is a top five team going into the season or should be because he gives UK a 7-foot post presence who averaged 13.7 points, 9.0 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per game last season and had 11 double-doubles. Most considered him the top transfer on the market this spring.
But earlier this week Adam Zagoria of Zagsblog told us about a SEC transfer rule I knew nothing about that requires undergraduate transfers to have two seasons of competition remaining:
“A student-athlete who, upon enrollment at the certifying institution, has less than 2 years of eligibility remaining shall not be eligible for intercollegiate competition at a member institution until the student has fulfilled a residence requirement of one full academic year.”
An SEC spokesman told him Sarr would need a waiver from the conference to become eligible because he’s not a graduate transfer like Reid Travis or Nate Sestina were before or Davion Mintz is this year.
ESPN analyst Dick Vitale tweeted “this could mean bad news” for Sarr and Kentucky when he read Zagoria’s report. Vitale noted this “causes total confusion with the waiver request” for Sarr.
However, on Tuesday Vitale dropped this bit of breaking news on Twitter about the Sarr situation.
“BBN FYI the @NCAA has cleared OLIVIER SARR about 2 months ago to be eligible to play but the holdup is that the @SEC must grant a waiver due to a rule they have that states if a player that transfers has 1 yr of eligibility he must sit out . However the SEC can grant a waiver,” Vitale posted on Twitter.
But will the NCAA grant the waiver? Got to admit it seems to me that might not be going to happen considering how long the SEC has been sitting on this and that really will be bad news for Sarr and UK.
