Arizona star Allonzo Trier's NCAA ineligibility is more complicated than it seems

The biggest problem for Arizona guard Allonzo Trier at the moment is that he is not Arizona guard Allonzo Trier at the moment. He's just Allonzo Trier.
The NCAA has ruled him ineligible for competition because a January drug test showed the reappearance of a trace amount of a banned substance the organization had acknowledged he unknowingly ingested in 2016.

His second-biggest problem is that the detail of this circumstance does not fit easily into a headline or tweet.
On Twitter, it looks like a young man who’d already lost most of his sophomore season to a failed drug test was foolish enough to get himself busted again. That's not, according to Arizona athletics, what happened in Trier's case.

The school released a statement Thursday afternoon saying Trier's January drug screening "revealed the reappearance of a trace amount of a banned substance. The amount detected was miniscule by scientific standards and appears to be the remnant of a substance, which the NCAA agreed, Allonzo had unknowingly ingested in 2016."

The university is appealing the ruling and is hoping he will have his eligibility restored. Trier is a 6-4 junior guard from Seattle who is averaging 19.4 points and shooting 43 percent from 3-point range. He has started 27 games this season and is indispensable enough to the Wildcats — who are ranked No. 14 and leading the race for the Pac-12 Conference championship — that he plays 34 minutes a game at both point guard and shooting guard.
Last season, he missed 19 games after failing a random drug screening in September 2016. He was suspended for that failed test but appealed and won his case; however, the NCAA declined to allow him to return to the court until the substance was entirely out of his system.

He reportedly took a drug given to him by a relative after he was involved in a car accident between his freshman and sophomore seasons, unaware it contained the banned substance. "I have never knowingly taken a banned substance," Trier said then. "The NCAA agreed that I had no knowledge of receiving the substance and my eligibility was restored."

From the time of his initial test until he at last was allowed to play last season, roughly four months passed. It has not been made public how much of the substance was in his system as the NCAA continued to delay his return a year ago; nor is it clear whether the organization would maintain the same standard in this instance.

Arizona has three regular-season games remaining following Thursday night's visit to Oregon State, then the Pac-12 Tournament and the NCAAs.
Given the circumstance, it's disappointing the NCAA would declare Trier ineligible and again make it appear to many he is either a cheat (for taking a banned substance) or a fool (for not learning his lesson the first time). The NCAA could have — and perhaps should have — avoided this.
The assumptions being made in the public sphere about Trier did not have to occur. They're out there now, though. Hard to put that back in a bottle.