Tacko Fall receives academic waiver from NCAA, will play for UCF in opener

It appears as if another wrong has been righted by the NCAA, as Tacko Fall will be taking the court for UCF

As the 2015-16 college basketball season opens up, much of the focus and media attention has not been on the likes of Duke, North Carolina, Maryland or Kentucky, rather they’ve been on one young man in particular — UCF center Tacko Fall. Last week it was reported that Fall would not be granted an academic waiver from the NCAA to play for the Knights, which caused quite the stir around the nation in regards to the Senegal native.

Well, the NCAA has once again put their heads on straight and done the right thing.

According to ESPN, the 7-foot-6 center from Senegal has indeed been granted the waiver that he and a lot of other people were looking for and he’ll be able to take the floor when UCF plays Davidson on Saturday evening.

Prior to signing with UCF, Fall spent time at Liberty Christian Preparatory School and that is where the problem originally arose from. The NCAA was not accepting some of his core courses from the school, and because of that, he wasn’t even allowed to practice with the team.

Now, it should be noted that Fall is an Engineering major, so he’s not exactly on the wrong side of his academics, to say the very least.

In a statement to ESPN, Knights head coach Donnie Jones expressed how happy he is for this young man, pretty much echoing the sentiment from the rest of us in this situation.

“I’m so happy for Tacko. He handled this with such humility, and we’re so thankful the NCAA understands his story,” Jones told ESPN.

And of course, Fall expressed how happy he is as well.

“I would also like to thank the NCAA for allowing me to continue to pursue my dream here at UCF as a student-athlete,” Fall said Friday in a statement.

The NCAA doesn’t always do the right thing, but this is one of the few times they did in fact get it right.