Diallo, a native of Mali, attended a NY high school, Our Savior New American, before enrolling at Kansas. Kansas’ freshman big man has been cleared by the NCAA after missing the Jayhawks’ first four games because of questions about his academic transcript in high school, according to Gary Parrish of CBS Sports.
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With the information the NCAA eligibility center possessed before the season, they ruled Diallo ineligible to compete.
The NCAA announced Wednesday that Diallo is eligible to compete on December 1. “Additionally, staff considered a complex set of circumstances regarding amateurism”.
Kansas submitted new information to the NCAA last week, featuring results of an independent investigation into Diallo’s coursework prior to arriving on campus. Kansas now is in Hawaii for the Maui Invitational, where it takes on No. 19 Vanderbilt on Wednesday night in the championship game.
“I really want to thank the NCAA staff for guiding this process to a fair conclusion in what was a very complicated situation”, Kansas athletic director Sheahon Zenger said in the NCAA release.
KU sharply criticized the NCAA’s handling of the case in a lengthy letter sent on November 10.
Zenger wrote that Kansas officials found “serious and legitimate misrepresentations attributed to NCAA process, unfounded verbal statements and inadequate professional standards” during the investigation.
The university had worked with the NCAA for several weeks on Diallo’s eligibility before a decision was handed down Wednesday.
Then there’s the on-the-court ramifications of Diallo’s decision. It would’ve been so nice – they didn’t suspend him five games, they suspended him seven because of the two exhibition games, which would have been so nice for him to get 20 minutes a game in these games, so therefore he could’ve played though his mistakes and figured it out.
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Diallo is expected to be a force down low and will immediately be one of the Jayhawks’ best players on the floor.
