BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Will Wade and LSU were not there for their scheduled appearance at the SEC basketball media days Tuesday. Their plane was grounded due to fog in Baton Rouge and was unable to take off. It was an apt metaphor for Wade’s team, which remains shrouded in mystery just weeks before the start of the regular season.
In lieu of in-person questions, LSU held a Zoom call with the media later in the day with Wade. For a few minutes, the coach dropped his permanent expression, defaulting to raging anger when asked specific questions about who is actually playing for the Tigers in 2026-27.
At one point earlier this month, LSU had four players on its roster. The Tigers ended up putting seven on the ground in their first exhibition game last week. We’ll see who shows up for their second showing on Wednesday. There is uncertainty across the country as court cases continue to unfold, but nowhere more so than LSU’s.
Hence the questions.
The first specific one was about RJ Luis Jr., who is the basketball version of the NFL players Lane Kiffin attempted to put on his football roster. Luis was a standout player at St. John’s who turned pro in 2025, went undrafted, and then signed contracts with two NBA franchises. He signed with LSU on May 19 and was later ruled ineligible by the SEC, then granted a motion for an injunction to join the Tigers. Wade hugged Luis outside the courtroom as if the player had just overcome a life-threatening illness.
RJ Luis wins injunction request and will be declared eligible to join the LSU team pic.twitter.com/RJNDSQPmDz
– Michael Cauble (@Cauble) August 24, 2026
Since then, the question has arisen as to whether LSU would continue its eligibility war with the league over Luis. On the Zoom call, Wade said tersely that LSU is “going to follow all SEC protocols with him” and that Luis was not added to the roster. The last time the school tried to cross that Rubicon, everyone ended up in court and the conference threatened to expel LSU. In Luis’ case, the Tigers blinked.
I then asked Wade about Márcio Santos, a EuroLeague pro who went through the 2023 draft process and played in five NBA Summer League games. That’s when Wade started yelling about “issues that matter to you.” Wade told local Louisiana media on September 23 that Santos would not join LSU and he subsequently signed a two-year contract in Europe. Wade seemed to think that being asked about it was a huge affront.
“Pat, are you following us at all?” » Wade shouted. “Because Santos hasn’t been a member of our team since July. So, I don’t know where you got that from.”
For the sake of clarification, July and September 23 are not the same thing. Either way, the coach who treated his squad like a covert operation was a little touchy.
Moving on, I asked about foreign pros Saliou Niang (drafted by Cleveland with the 58th pick in the 2025 NBA Draft) and Gilad Levy (24-year-old big man). Plus former Illinois, Louisville and UCLA guard Skyy Clark (currently ineligible after Kentucky court ruling). None have yet been listed on an LSU roster.
“We’ll see who’s eligible,” Wade said, still seething but no longer shouting. “We’re happy that this group is eligible – the ones that were actually on our roster, the ones that were actually on our team, we think those guys will be eligible. How about that?”
My last question was about Brandon Bender, whose son, Jordan, is one of the few publicly eligible Tigers. Brandon Bender played briefly at Louisville during the 2001-2002 season before being suspended by Rick Pitino and ultimately leaving the program. He was then named “Representative 2” in an NCAA major infractions case that resulted in a one-year ban from Central Florida basketball playoffs in 2013. Most recently, Bender was involved in a custody dispute over a 7-foot African player who came to school at Louisville. Bender was listed as the player’s guardian.
Besides having a son on the team, Brandon Bender has been a steal for years with new LSU assistant coach Rick Stansbury whose reputation in the SEC precedes him. It dates back to his time as head coach at Mississippi State, when Stansbury’s recruiting tactics angered coaches from the South to the Northeast. (Stansbury has at least two sons affiliated with the LSU team, Luke as a reserve player and Isaac as director of analytics and scouting.)
In short, this is how Wade’s profligate return to the SEC began: a canceled flight, a tantrum during an interview and marginal clarity on who will actually suit up for Wade 2.0 at LSU.
If you thought it might be different this time around, guess what: it’s not. The Strong-Ass Offer Guy is who he is, at heart. He was fired by LSU four years ago for major NCAA violations, but it’s not like he came back chastened.
Wade recently compared his list building to the pioneering companies of Airbnb and Uber. It was a strange move, as if trampling on NCAA and SEC rules to frantically scour the world for players was the mark of a visionary. At least he didn’t go that route again on Tuesday.
Wade could put several of his purgatory players in uniform and make a pretty good team. “I feel good about some of the information we have on the ground,” he said, and he is probably telling the truth in this isolated case.
But there may also still be SEC resistance to at least one of those players, Niang, who basketball insiders say is one of the highest-paid players in the conference. Even if he gains NCAA eligibility, the league has established a potential barrier to him wearing a uniform. Since late August, SEC policy has prohibited listing an athlete who has “previously declared for the NFL, NBA or WNBA draft and has not appropriately withdrawn.” Commissioner Greg Sankey was “authorized to enforce this expectation by imposing sanctions on member institutions.”
The uncertainty in Niang adds to the tension between the league and the school. The SEC sued LSU in federal court in early September for recruiting former NFL players, then overturned a potential vote to expel the school from the league. But the lawsuit remains in effect and LSU resumed hostilities in late September by filing a motion to dismiss it. Tuesday was the judge’s requested deadline for the league to respond to LSU’s motion to dismiss the suit.
From puppet governor Jeff Landry on down, this is the path LSU has chosen: hire Kiffin and play eligibility games in football; rehire Wade and play eligibility games in men’s basketball; hiring Wade’s McNeese State group, school president Wade Rousse and athletic director Heath Schroyer; Kim Mulkey, combative and combative women’s basketball coach; fighting the SEC on multiple fronts; generally behaving with brazen defiance. The Tigers used a strange combativeness as a weapon.
At the SEC spring meetings, the most common words heard from coaches and administrators were, “Do we want to be governed or not?” Since then, LSU’s response has essentially been: “Not really.”
It’s a strange position for an accomplished athletic department. LSU doesn’t need to go rogue, stay rogue, and revel in the rogue; it seems like a choice that comes naturally.
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