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BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA - MARCH 30: New head coach Will Wade of the LSU Tigers Men's Basketball team walking into his press conference in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on March 30, 2026 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Photo by Reagan Cotten/LSU Athletics via Getty Images)
Since his NC State team was knocked out of the tournament by Sean Miller’s Texas, Will Wade’s life has been pretty active.
After telling State fans, and apparently A.D. Boo Corrigan, that he wasn’t talking to LSU, he took the job anyway. However, he has had some trouble filling out his roster. For a time, he had just one player, Kentucky transfer Mouhamed Dioubate.
He’s picked up guards Austin Nunez and Divine Ugochukwu, Brazilian big man Marcio Santos, and Abdi Bashir from Kansas State. He also picked up French big Brice Dessert, who UNC was apparently after, and if Allen Graves pulls out of the draft, there’s a strong chance he’ll play at LSU.
So the frontcourt could be pretty solid, but the backcourt is questionable. So Wade does what he always does under pressure: he looks for an easy way out. And over the last two days, Wade has signed a 25-year-old Israeli, Yam Madar, and former St. John’s star RJ Luis.
Luis left St. John’s to try his hand with the NBA, but obviously, he wasn’t ready, and the NCAA has made it clear that guys who sign contracts, even two-ways, can’t come back.
Will it work?
Luis is bound to become another test case, but since Charles Bediako got shot down for the same basic thing at Alabama, it seems unlikely. Our guess is some sleazy LSU fanboy of a judge approves it, then it gets shot down by the next judge.
Look, he’ll get enough players to practice eventually. The real question is what happens when SEC play cranks up? Because right now, Wade just doesn’t have enough, and unlike past situations, he can’t cheat his way out of it, and other coaches have already bought up the good players.
Having to pay a reputed $5 million for Madar, who is a decent but hardly great player, illustrates the point. It’s going to be fun to watch him try to spin his way out of this self-inflicted mess.
It’s also worth mentioning that this is the second year in a row that Wade has struggled to put together a coherent roster.
Finally, his act is not going over well with people around the game. Look at what Jeff Goodman says about him here. Absolutely brutal.
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