Oscar Tshiebwe wants to know if he has any more college eligibility left

Confusion continues to spread across the college basketball world, even more so after news broke earlier this week that a former NBA Draft pick has been cleared to play college basketball this season.

James Nnaji was the 31st overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft and played multiple years in NBA Summer League, but never officially signed a professional contract with an NBA team, which gave the NCAA enough reason to provide him with four full years of college eligibility. The 21-year-old seven-footer signed with Baylor on Tuesday and is expected to make his college debut sometime. If it feels like the line between college and pro is being blurred, that’s because it is. This isn’t a trend that will go away anytime soon, either. If anything, it’s only going to encourage more players to see just how far they can stretch the NCAA’s current guidelines.

But wouldn’t it be nice if it somehow benefited Kentucky? Say, in the form of a former National Player of the Year returning to the Bluegrass State?

Oscar Tshiebwe has been making his pitch for another year of eligibility on social media. Soon after the news of Nnaji joining Baylor broke, The Big O was wondering aloud why he couldn’t do the same. “That mean I have one more (year) right?” he wrote on X/Twitter. “Wait a minute are people allowed to go back to school?” he wrote in another post.

Tshiebwe technically played four seasons in college (two at West Virginia, two at Kentucky), but his first season came in 2019-20, which did not count toward a player’s eligibility due to the pandemic. So yes, Tshiebwe does have one more year of college eligibility remaining. He was pretty good during those two seasons in Lexington.

That mean I have one more right? https://t.co/cjPIF5u67u

— Big O (@Oscartshiebwe34) December 25, 2025

But as much as a Tshiebwe return would fill the Big Blue Nation with joy, there is a key difference between Nnaji receiving eligibility and Tshiebwe potentially (even as a joke online) returning to college: Tshiebwe has played NBA games. The 6-foot-9 big man appeared in 21 games across the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons for the Utah Jazz, although he’s yet to make his debut in 2025-26. Tshiebwe has been a dominant G League player the last few years, even making the G League First Team the last two seasons while setting rebound records along the way. He’s done much more at the next level than Nnaji did.

At least with how the rules are currently constructed, someone playing in a real NBA game appears to be the line that the NCAA will not cross (at least not yet!) to deem a player eligible in college. But someone will test those boundaries sooner rather than later.