GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Florida guard Denzel Aberdeen has joined a growing list of players suing the NCAA in hopes of gaining a fifth year of eligibility.<\/p>\n
Aberdeen\u2019s attorney, Jesse Panuccio, filed the lawsuit Friday in Gainesville. His motion notes that more than 30 courts across the country have ruled that the NCAA\u2019s \u201carbitrary decision\u201d against student-athletes who began college careers during the 2022-23 season and completed four seasons of eligibility is \u201cunlawful.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe NCAA\u2019s refusal to honor its current eligibility framework breaches its contract with UF, which is intended to benefit student-athletes like Aberdeen,\u201d the suit said.<\/p>\n
The NCAA\u2019s move to a five-year, age-based eligibility model has led to a series of court fights across the country.<\/p>\n
Aberdeen played three seasons at Florida before transferring to Kentucky last year. He reenrolled at Florida earlier this year in hopes of finishing his undergraduate degree. He has worked out and practiced with the Gators all summer.<\/p>\n
He initially planned to convince the NCAA that his freshman year in Gainesville should be considered a redshirt season. The 6-foot-5 Orlando native played just 12 games in 2022-23, scoring 19 points in 41 total minutes. He had hoped to get a waiver from the NCAA to secure another year of eligibility.<\/p>\n
But the NCAA has since adopted the five-year eligibility model, which is scheduled to be fully implemented next fall, that will allow players to have five years of eligibility with the clock starting when athletes turn 19 or graduate from high school, whichever is earlier.<\/p>\n
That change quickly led to lawsuits from four-year players in the high school class of 2022, like Aberdeen.<\/p>\n
As of last week, the NCAA said there have been 79 lawsuits with a total of 450 plaintiffs across all sports involved in litigation tied to the five-year rule, with 234 of those coming in men\u2019s basketball and 33 in women\u2019s basketball. Of that group, 154 men\u2019s players and 26 women\u2019s players have received some type of relief from the courts allowing them to play while the rest are currently ineligible.<\/p>\n
If granted a temporary restraining order, Aberdeen would slide into a starting spot to replace Xaivian Lee.<\/p>\n
The Gators already are the betting favorite \u2014 and likely to be ranked No. 1 in preseason polls \u2014 to win it all in 2027. Coach Todd Golden retained most of last year\u2019s roster, most notably big men Alex Condon, Thomas Haugh and Rueben Chinyelu.<\/p>\n
Aberdeen started 35 games for Kentucky last season, averaging 13.5 points, 3.4 assists and 2.5 rebounds. He came off the bench the previous two years at Florida and averaged 7.7 points as a junior in 2024-25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Florida guard Denzel Aberdeen has joined a growing list of players suing the NCAA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-399085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}