Tennessee lands former Vanderbilt center Jalen Washington via transfer portal

The Tennessee Volunteers have picked up an intriguing big man via the transfer portal after a lawsuit granted him an extra year of eligibility to play college hoops.

That big man would be former top center recruit Jalen Washington, who spent his first three seasons with the North Carolina Tar Heels before transferring to Vanderbilt in 2025-26.

Washington gained an additional year of eligibility via court injunction after he joined a lawsuit against the NCAA's "5 in 5" rule. 

The new rule follows an age-based model that starts an athlete's eligibility clock at the time of their full-time enrollment in college or at the beginning of the academic year following their 19th birthday, whichever occurs earlier. From the start of that clock, the athletes will have five years to play out their eligibility, and that new rule is scheduled to start this summer with the recruiting class of 2027. 

The new model didn't include any language to grandfather athletes whose fourth seasons of eligibility were completed by the spring of 2026. That's where these new lawsuits have come in, and that's how Washington has gained this extra year.