The NCAA Said No Twice. A Washington Judge Just Said Andrew Cook Can Play.

Rapid Response / Legal Alert | September 15, 2026

Andrew Cook's college basketball career was supposed to have one more season.

Then, 19 seconds before the end of a preseason scrimmage, he came down on another player's foot.

The result was multiple ankle fractures, cartilage damage, surgery—and the loss of the entire 2025–26 season.

The NCAA nevertheless denied Cook another year of eligibility. He appealed. The NCAA denied that too.

So Cook appealed somewhere else: court.

On September 14, Spokane County Superior Court Judge Breean Beggs granted Cook preliminary injunctive relief that allows the Eastern Washington guard to compete during the 2026–27 season while his eligibility lawsuit proceeds. Eastern Washington announced Monday evening that Cook is returning to the Eagles; its season opens November 2 at Stanford.

That makes Cook's case more interesting than another athlete receiving an extra season.

The NCAA denied him twice. A state judge effectively became the next level of eligibility review.

Cook's eligibility history is unusual even by the standards of modern college sports.

He played three seasons at Carroll College, an NAIA school, before transferring to Eastern Washington for 2024–25. He immediately became one of the Big Sky's better players, leading Eastern with 15.8 points per game, shooting 54.4% from the field and earning first-team All-Big Sky honors.

Ordinarily, that fourth playing season could have ended his college career.

But in December 2024, the NCAA Division I Board of Directors approved a blanket waiver for a particular group of athletes affected by the legal fight over whether time spent competing at non-NCAA schools should count against NCAA eligibility. The waiver permitted qualifying athletes who had previously competed at non-NCAA institutions to remain eligible during 2025–26 if they otherwise would have exhausted their eligibility after 2024–25.

Cook qualified.

Then he never got to use the season.

During Eastern Washington's first preseason scrimmage in October 2025, Cook fractured his ankle in multiple places and damaged cartilage. He underwent surgery and missed the entire year.

Cook then sought NCAA relief that would let him replace the lost season with 2026–27. The NCAA denied the request. An internal appeal was denied at the end of March. Cook even entered the transfer portal in April despite technically having no remaining eligibility, hoping either the NCAA would reconsider or another program might be willing to support a legal challenge.

Ultimately, he returned to Eastern—and went to court.

Cook's case belongs to the same eligibility-litigation universe as the wave of lawsuits challenging the NCAA's five-year clock, treatment of junior-college seasons and new five-for-five model.

But the factual theory is different.

Cook is not principally saying: “That old season should never have counted.”

His argument is closer to: “You already gave me this season. An injury made it impossible for me to use it.”

That distinction matters.

The NCAA's traditional medical-hardship framework exists to address incapacitating injuries or illnesses that prevent an athlete from completing a season, subject to detailed requirements concerning when the injury occurred and how much the athlete competed. NCAA materials continue to identify separate hardship and extension-of-eligibility mechanisms within the rules applicable to athletes transitioning out of the older eligibility system.

Cook's circumstance does not fit neatly into the ordinary mold because his 2025–26 eligibility itself arose from the NCAA's special non-NCAA-school blanket waiver.

That is precisely what makes the dispute interesting.

The NCAA created an additional season for a defined category of athletes. Cook qualified for it. A catastrophic injury prevented him from playing a single game. The question became whether NCAA rules nevertheless required that opportunity to disappear.

For now, a Washington court has said he can play while that question is litigated.

The broader significance is institutional.

For decades, eligibility disputes largely ended where the NCAA's internal process ended. An athlete could seek a waiver, pursue the available appeal and, if unsuccessful, live with the result.

That assumption is eroding.

Athletes now routinely understand litigation as another available step in the eligibility process—particularly when the alternative is losing a season that can never be recovered.

Cook followed the NCAA process.

Waiver denied.

He appealed.

Appeal denied.

He sued.

Injunction granted.

That sequence illustrates an increasingly uncomfortable governance problem for the NCAA.

A waiver system depends not merely on written rules, but on the governing body's ability to render authoritative answers. If athletes increasingly can obtain emergency judicial review after losing internally, the NCAA's eligibility machinery starts looking less like a final adjudicatory system and more like administrative exhaustion before litigation begins.

That does not mean courts will routinely overturn NCAA decisions. Nor does Cook's injunction establish that NCAA waiver denials are generally subject to searching judicial review.

But every successful injunction gives the next athlete another reason to try.

The immediate consequence is straightforward: Cook can play for Eastern Washington in 2026–27. The school says he is back, and for a program that is returning a player who averaged 15.8 points on 54.4% shooting in his last healthy season, that is a meaningful roster change.

But this is a preliminary injunction, not a final judgment.

Washington's Civil Rule 65 expressly treats preliminary injunctions as interim relief while the underlying action remains pending; the court can later proceed to a full merits determination.

So the ruling does not establish that:

Cook has finally won his lawsuit;

the NCAA's medical-hardship rules are invalid;

every athlete who loses a season to injury receives another year;

or other courts must reach the same result.

The relief presently protects Cook while the case continues.

That distinction matters because college eligibility litigation increasingly produces dramatic immediate consequences from temporary orders. The athlete plays now. The broader legal question may remain unsettled for months—or never receive a definitive appellate answer at all.

The legal case continues, but the competitive timeline will move much faster than the litigation.

Eastern Washington begins the regular season November 2 at Stanford, and the university is presently proceeding on the understanding that Cook can play.

The NCAA can continue defending its eligibility determination and may seek further review of the injunction. The underlying litigation will also determine whether Cook's temporary relief survives beyond the preliminary stage.

But the more consequential thing to watch is what happens outside Cook's case.

Every athlete with an unusual waiver denial now has another example to put in front of counsel.

And that is the larger story.

For years, the NCAA operated the eligibility system and the NCAA operated the appeals process. Increasingly, athletes who receive their final “no” from Indianapolis are asking a different institution for the final word.

The courthouse is becoming part of the eligibility process.