UCLA Bruins guard retired from basketball, but now he wants NCAA to give him a 5th year of eligibility

UCLA Bruins guard retired from basketball, but now he wants NCAA to give him a 5th year of eligibility originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

Donovan Dent is the latest example of the confusion of the modern era of college basketball.

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In May, Dent announced he was retiring from basketball. Not just moving on from the NCAA, but hanging up his high-tops and calling it a career.

Now, he wants to keep playing.

KRQE, a local television station in New Mexico, spoke to Dent and learned that he actually is going to try to continue his college basketball career.

“I just looked at it as another opportunity because I was completely done with it, and seeing that they made a fifth year possible and all of my coaches and my family were like, ‘Let’s give it one more,'” Dent told KRQE. “They kind of talked to me about it, and I was like, okay. We just look at it like another opportunity for a blessing, I guess.”

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Dent told KRQE he didn’t yet know where he’d play.

Right now, he still has to apply for that fifth year, because while rules are getting put in place to allow that, it wouldn’t have applied to Dent’s class when entering college.

Dent played his first three college seasons at New Mexico, and he was the Mountain West Player of the Year in 2024-25.

That got him a spot at UCLA for a solid 2025-26 season in the Big Ten.

Now, Dent is the latest example of the confusing nature of modern college basketball.

For most of the sport’s existence, four years would’ve been it, and there wouldn’t have been any questions to be asked.

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Now, Dent is seeing if he can get a year that originally didn’t even belong to him — and give the way college sports are going at the moment, he very well might get it.

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Publish date : 2026-07-14 13:57:00

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