LEXINGTON, Ky. — In going back to Missouri, Mark Mitchell made an eminently logical decision.

To play in 2026-27 for Mizzou, Mitchell need only prevail in his legal battle with the NCAA for a fifth season of men’s college basketball eligibility.

Conversely, for Mitchell to play for Kentucky, the team which he was trying to join via transfer, he would have needed to complete two steps:

— Mitchell still would have had to prevail in court against the NCAA for a fifth season;

— He also would have needed to secure a legal victory against the Southeastern Conference forcing the league to set aside its prohibition on intraconference transfers outside a sport’s regular portal window.

In recasting his lot Monday with Mizzou, Mitchell removed one of the barriers to his return to college hoops.

Over the two-plus seasons Pope has been the Kentucky coach, it has often seemed that, if it weren’t for bad luck, the UK head man would have no luck at all.

Injuries to key players sabotaged each of Pope’s first two Kentucky teams. Now, the possible addition of an All-SEC forward to the coach’s third UK roster was done in by administrative rigidity on the part of the SEC.

As I pointed out in a column last week, the SEC, not the NCAA, was always the biggest impediment to Mitchell getting to play for UK.

Southeastern Conference transfer rules hold that athletes can move from one SEC school to another only if their transfer occurs “within their sport’s regular NCAA transfer window immediately following the sport’s championship segment.”

In 2026, the NCAA men’s basketball transfer portal was open from April 7 to April 21. At that time, Mitchell thought his college eligibility had expired and did not place his name into the transfer portal.

Earlier this month, when Mitchell became the beneficiary of a temporary restraining order affording him a fifth season of college eligibility, one would have thought what is a unique set of circumstances might have led the SEC to waive its intraleague transfer ban.

Instead, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey took a hard line.

The fact that there were players whose college eligibility was thought to have expired with the 2025-26 school year who nevertheless entered their names in the portal does not prove that Mitchell deserved to have his transfer options constrained for having failed to take that same step.

It actually begs a different question: Why are players whose eligibility is thought to have expired allowed to enter the transfer portal in the first place?

Kentucky saw twice last season how effective the 6-foot-9, 235-pound Mitchell can be.

The forward dropped 21 points on the Wildcats at Rupp Arena in a 73-68 Missouri upset Jan. 7. Mitchell was even better against the Cats in the SEC Tournament, going for 32 points and seven rebounds, though UK turned the tables on the Tigers with a 78-72 victory.

When it appeared Mitchell was Lexington bound, the general perception was he would have raised the ceiling for what is expected to be a “good” Kentucky team in 2026-27 to “very good.”

This even though Mitchell, who averaged 18.3 points, 5.3 rebounds and 3.2 assists last season for Missouri, was not a perfect fit for what Kentucky appears to lack.

A so-so 5.1-a-game career rebounder, Mitchell was not the obvious answer for a UK roster perceived to lack rebounding.

At Missouri last season, a lot of the Tigers’ offense featured Mitchell with the ball in his hands. The guards expected to start for Kentucky in the coming season, Washington transfer Zoom Diallo and Furman transfer Alex Wilkins, are both players also used to playing with the rock in their possession.

None of which is to suggest that Kentucky wouldn’t have been better off with Mitchell.

It would have been.

Without Mitchell, Pope still has enough talent on his roster that, if UK can stay healthy, the Wildcats can legitimately aspire to the NCAA Tournament’s second weekend.

Had Mitchell become a Cat, Kentucky could have realistically aspired to more.

Mitchell is from the high school graduating class of 2022. I, for one, hope the “Class of 2022ers” prevail in the legal system against the college sports hierarchy in the players’ drive for an extra year to play college athletics.

It was unfair for the NCAA not to grandfather those players into its new “five years to play five seasons” eligibility model.

Almost all the high school classes that immediately proceeded the class of 2022 got a fifth season to play college sports due to the NCAA-granted “free COVID year.” All the classes to follow the class of 2022 will get five years to play college sports via the “five-in-five” model.

As for Mitchell, now that he is back with Mizzou his name will go into Kentucky men’s hoops lore among other high-profile players who fleetingly aligned with the Wildcats only to never play.

Gunther Behnke and Tito Horford, Shawn Kemp and Enes Kanter, meet Mark Mitchell.

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