photo by: AP Photo/Kelley L Cox

Purdue forward Trey Kaufman-Renn (4) warms up before facing Arizona in the Elite Eight of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Saturday, March 28, 2026, in San Jose, Calif.

It turns out that the Kansas men’s basketball team wasn’t done adding after all.

KU coach Bill Self, who previously appeared to have had a full roster, announced on Monday that the Jayhawks have added former Purdue forward Trey Kaufman-Renn. Kaufman-Renn is eligible for the 2026-27 season under the terms of an injunction he received in Clark County, Indiana, court on Oct. 9.

“Trey Kaufman-Renn, who had a tremendous career at Purdue, has enrolled in classes, and is practicing with us as of Sunday,” Self said in a press release. “He reached the national championship game, the Elite 8 and the Sweet 16 at Purdue and has been extremely well-drilled and well-coached. Even though it’s late in the process, because of his basketball IQ, we think his transition will be quicker than most put in the same circumstance.”

The salient question, of course, is how KU has managed to add a player to its roster when it already has 15 who count toward the 15-player limit following the return of Melvin Council Jr. (Walk-on Will Thengvall, the 16th, is exempt from the limit.)

The answer is a season-ending injury to freshman forward Grant Mordini’s patellar tendon, Self said, which he suffered in practice last month. With Mordini set to miss the whole season and exempt from the roster, that creates a space for Kaufman-Renn to take his place this year.

According to the College Sports Commission’s roster limit rules, “A student-athlete who sustains a medically documented season-ending injury or illness before the sport’s roster submission date may continue to use institutional facilities and resources for rehabilitation purposes and may participate in practice activities, when medically cleared, during the academic year without counting in the sport’s roster limit.” The roster submission date for KU is Nov. 1.

As with Council and Tre White, Kaufman-Renn’s ongoing eligibility may be contested in the courts at various points throughout the season. The NCAA has not yet appealed his injunction. The terms of that injunction have not been publicly reported because the text of Special Judge Justin B. Mills’ ruling is not available on the Indiana court records website — the Journal-World has inquired with the clerk’s office — but Kaufman-Renn’s case is somewhat different from those of the fifth-year athletes like the plaintiffs in Tre White’s lawsuit. Kaufman-Renn actually already spent five seasons in college, but he redshirted during the 2021-22 season due to a knee injury, meaning that he only competed in four. That reasoning was sufficient to convince the court that he should get his chance to play for a fifth year.

When he did play for the Boilermakers, the 6-foot-9, 240-pound forward from Sellersburg, Indiana, excelled. As a junior during the 2024-25 campaign, his best season, he averaged 20.1 points and 6.5 rebounds and was named first-team All-Big Ten and an All-American honorable mention. Last year those numbers shifted to 14.2 points and 8.3 boards. Kaufman-Renn scored a game-winning tip-in against Texas in the Sweet 16 before the Boilermakers fell to Arizona in the Elite Eight.

The Minnesota Timberwolves selected Kaufman-Renn in the second round of the 2026 NBA Draft, and he averaged 6.6 points and 3.6 rebounds for the team in the NBA Summer League. But according to the text of a temporary restraining order that Kaufman-Renn received prior to his injunction, “His uncontroverted testimony is that he has signed no professional playing contract, that he received no compensation for Summer League participation beyond actual and necessary expenses, and that the only professional playing opportunity presently identified to him is a development-league position at approximately $45,000 per year.”

So he’s headed back to college — at the school where his cousin, freshman forward Brooklynn Renn, plays for the women’s basketball team. Speaking to the Journal-World in May, she called Kaufman-Renn her “best friend growing up” and “protector.”

Kaufman-Renn immediately adds vastly more inside scoring potential and veteran experience to the Jayhawks’ lineup. His positional fit will be a subject of some intrigue. For much of his career he played as a power forward, a position where the Jayhawks already have quite a few options, headlined by Keanu Dawes, Tyran Stokes and Tre White. But during his most productive campaign, the 2024-25 season, he played quite frequently as an undersized center. If he takes on that role for the Jayhawks he could take some of the burden off Christian Reeves and Paul Mbiya to play prominent roles.