Oklahoma State’s Final Basketball Scholarship Hinges on Parsa Fallah Waiver

The Oklahoma State men’s basketball team has one more scholarship to give for 2026-27. We now know why they do.

Oklahoma State Cowboys forward Parsa Fallah. | William Purnell-Imagn Images

Between prep recruiting, the transfer portal and holdovers, Oklahoma State men's basketball coach Steve Lutz nearly has his 2026-27 roster.

There's one more scholarship to give and for the past couple of weeks the mystery has been why? In an interview with beat writers on Tuesday, Lutz explained that the Cowboys are holding the scholarship while center Parsa Fallah applies for a waiver from the NCAA.

The question is whether the NCAA will give it to him? Given how college athletics seems to work these days, exploring his options is an interesting thought exercise.

Parsa Fallah’s Waiver Options

Oklahoma State men's basketball coach Steve Lutz. | Stephen Garcia/Avalanche-Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Fallah tore the ACL in his knee in the Cowboys’ game with West Virginia on Feb. 24. At the time, everyone believed that was the end of his career. He had already used three years of eligibility at Southern Utah, redshirting one year and playing two others. He played his redshirt junior year at Oregon State before he transferred to Oklahoma State for his redshirt senior season.

On paper, as painful as it might be to accept, his athletic career should be done. There are a couple of examples that line up. Texas Tech forward JT Toppin suffered the same injury in the same month but he's coming back to school next year. The reason? He's a junior so he still has eligibility remaining.

The other is BYU guard Richie Saunders, who also tore his ACL in February. Saunders played four years in college basketball without a redshirt and had even done his mission trip. While he was generally believed to be heading to the NBA, his injury happened late enough in the season to lead one to believe the NCAA wouldn’t offer him an injury waiver. Fallah played even longer.

But Fallah isn’t applying for an injury waiver. Per Pistols Firing, he is filing for different reasons.

“Parsa is petitioning the NCAA for an extra year of eligibility because of some circumstances he had when he first came over to the United States,” Lutz said. “So, yes, I am holding the scholarship for him at this point.”

The same report referenced his journey to the U.S., which required him to go to an embassy in Africa and took six months for get to the U.S. But his eligibility clock wouldn't have started until stepped on a campus. That would have been when he was at Southern Utah.

In the current environment, there's no harm in applying for the waiver. The NCAA has awarded waivers to players in their seventh, and in some cases, even eighth year of college eligibility. The NCAA is trying to implement a “five-for-five” rule, and it might make exceptions to smoothly implement it and avoid legal hassles.

There's little harm in hanging onto the scholarship as he could award it to a prep recruit or to a player still hanging in the transfer portal if Fallah doesn't get his waiver. It's a low-risk, high-reward situation for Oklahoma State for a player who would be a huge boost inside once he’s fully recovered.