The eligibility saga of former St. John’s basketball star RJ Luis is over at LSU as the Tigers have given up its pursuit of having the former Big East Player of the Year on the court for them this season.
The concept was first reported by CBS Sports on Tuesday.
After leaving St. John’s following the 2024-25 season, Luis also opted to enter the transfer portal but chose to remain in the draft and forgo his remaining eligibility. He went undrafted in 2025 and signed a two-way deal with the Utah Jazz.
Luis never played in NBA Summer League with the Jazz before he was traded to the Boston Celtics in the summer and appeared in three preseason games before being waived and assigned to the Maine Celtics, the G-League affiliate.
RJ Luis never played a G-League game due to injury and attempted a comeback to college basketball this spring, committing to Will Wade and LSU with many legal battles looming.
A Louisiana judge ruled in favor of Luis, granting him a temporary restraining order to play but more hurdles awaited to clear SEC protocols after the conference instituted laws that prohibited players to properly withdraw from the NFL, NBA, and WNBA Drafts after the Tigers football program tried to return players who made the leap to the NFL.
Now, with LSU waving the white flag in trying to get the former Johnnie on its roster, Luis will have to look elsewhere to continue his career. He did not play in any of the Tigers’ exhibition games this season.
In three seasons of college basketball, one with UMass and two with St. John’s, Luis averaged 14.1 points, 5.6 rebounds, and 1.5 assists per game on 43.9-percent shooting from the floor and 31.4-percent from 3-point range.
RJ Luis’ eligibility case was always so different from others around the country as he willingly left college basketball, with at least one more year in the sport still available to him and tried to return after his first professional season did not go the way he intended.
It feels unlikely that another college program would try and add Luis that plays in a conference with softer rules than the SEC and his next decision would be determining if he wants to start a professional career overseas or return to the NBA G-League.
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