Kate Koval will play her junior season in Waco. The 6ft 5in Ukrainian centre committed to Baylor on Saturday after the NCAA granted her a legislative relief waiver, clearing her to transfer five months after the portal window shut and three weeks after she walked away from LSU because Kim Mulkey’s programme had signed a Russian player.
Koval left Baton Rouge in late August, less than a fortnight after LSU added Anna Minaeva, a 17-year-old post player who had been with MBA Moscow. Mulkey initially said Koval was departing for “personal reasons” and asked that her privacy be respected. On 2 September, Koval ended the ambiguity herself in a statement posted to Instagram.
A waiver that had no obvious precedent
The mechanics matter here. The spring transfer window closed in April, months before Minaeva signed, which left Koval without a route into the portal through the normal process. Her only option was a legislative relief waiver — the NCAA’s case-by-case escape hatch, usually reserved for medical hardship, coaching malfeasance or documented mental-health need. It was approved in the week leading up to her commitment.
That approval is the quietly significant part of the story. The NCAA has no policy on Russian athletes; unlike the international federations, American college sport never imposed one. Russian national teams have been frozen out of FIBA competition since the 2022 invasion, and Russian athletes who reached the Paris Olympics did so only as neutrals. College basketball has operated entirely outside that framework, recruiting from Russia without restriction throughout the war.
By granting the waiver, the NCAA effectively conceded that a Ukrainian player being asked to share a locker room with a Russian recruit constitutes a hardship its ordinary calendar cannot accommodate. It did not create a rule. It created a data point that the next athlete in the same position will cite.
Two positions, neither of them unreasonable
Koval’s case was personal rather than political. Her father serves in the Ukrainian military as a drone operator and, she wrote, “takes tremendous pride in defending his country against Russian aggression.”
“For me, this war is not distant or abstract,” she said. “People close to me have been killed and wounded in Russian attacks, and places where I grew up and first began playing basketball have been destroyed by missile strikes.” She added that the decision “has not been easy” but that she had “to remain true to myself, my values and my country.”
Mulkey, for her part, did not dispute any of it. She said she had spoken to Koval before pursuing Minaeva and had hoped the pair could serve as ambassadors for their countries.
“We had a long talk about it, and it was a hard decision for her,” Mulkey said. “Kate is a great person. She has to do what she feels is right for her.” On the recruitment itself she was blunt: “I’m not here to ask you to change how you feel about Russia. Know that what I have to do in this business, I cannot make a decision to not recruit somebody that can help our program because of a conflict between two countries.”
Both statements can be true at once, which is precisely why the situation had no internal solution. LSU went 29-6 last season and lost in the Sweet 16; Mulkey recruited a 6ft 5in teenager to help fix that. Koval, who left Ukraine in 2021 for Long Island Lutheran in New York and represented her country at this summer’s FIBA 3×3 World Cup, was not going to be the one who stayed.
What Baylor get
The basketball case is straightforward. Koval was the No. 5 overall recruit and the top post player in the 2024 class, made the ACC All-Freshman team at Notre Dame, then transferred to LSU and produced her best season: 35 appearances, 17 starts, and averages of 8.3 points on 56% shooting, 6.3 rebounds, 1.2 blocks and 1.1 steals.
- Notre Dame, 2024-25: 5.3 points, 4.7 rebounds per game
- LSU, 2025-26: 8.3 points, 6.3 rebounds, 1.2 blocks per game, 56% from the field
- Baylor last season: 25-9, four starters departed
Nicki Collen was rebuilding a frontcourt and lands a starting-calibre centre in the third week of September, which almost never happens. “We are beyond excited to welcome Kate to Baylor,” Collen said. “She has played at an elite level over the last two seasons.”
Baylor and LSU do not meet in the regular season. If the two programmes cross paths in March, the fixture will carry a subtext no bracket can flatten — and Koval, by then, will have spent a full season demonstrating what her refusal cost her, and what it did not.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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