Syracuse transfer Matthew Moyer declared eligible

Vanderbilt got a surprise addition to its 2018-19 basketball team on Thursday. Matthew Moyer, a Syracuse transfer who was expected to sit out the 2018-19 season, was granted a waiver for immediate eligibility.

We don’t know on what grounds the NCAA granted the waiver, but the association has gotten very lax with these in the past year for reasons that aren’t entirely clear. Anyway, Moyer will be eligible to play tomorrow night against Alcorn State. The waiver also prevents him from losing a year of eligibility: because he had previously used a redshirt year while at Syracuse, sitting out this season would have left him with only two years to play at Vanderbilt. Instead, he’ll have all but two games of this season — and Vanderbilt went 2-0 without him anyway.

This also now means that with Ejike Obinna redshirting, Vanderbilt will have ten scholarship players available now, which is good news for depth.