LSU’s athletic program has become a big attention-getter in recent years.
In 2021, Kim Mulkey was hired to run the women’s basketball program, leading them to a national title two years later.
Last fall, the football team fired head coach Brian Kelly midseason. Then, after a whirlwind affair, the program hired Lane Kiffin away from Mississippi, which was heading the College Football Playoff.
Four years after the LSU men’s basketball program fired him, Will Wade returned this spring, and his return has been an eventful one. After the transfer portal deadline passed, his program had returning players. So Wade has used an unconventional approach to getting talent into the building.
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Brian Fluharty/Imagn Images
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By Kevin Sweeney
It took a whole seven weeks for Will Wade to attempt to skirt NCAA rules in his return to LSU.
Former St. John’s wing RJ Luis Jr., who went undrafted in the 2025 NBA draft, signed with Wade and LSU for the 2026–27 season, according to multiple reports. Luis, who signed two-way contracts with both the Celtics and Jazz in the last year, will almost assuredly be ruled ineligible by the NCAA to return to college after a one-year hiatus. But that didn’t talk Wade, of “strong-ass offer” fame, out of moving forward with the recruitment. Luis likely will file a lawsuit against the NCAA in an attempt to be allowed to play the 2026–27 season, the last year in his five-year eligibility clock.
The rules have been laid out clear as can be: Players who sign NBA contracts aren’t allowed to play college basketball, and players can’t leave college basketball, go through the draft and come back. One of Wade’s SEC colleagues, Nate Oats, took plenty of heat to test the durability of that rule this winter when he tried to bring Charles Bediako back to the Tide midseason and failed.
But that isn’t stopping Wade and LSU from brazenly attempting to get around those rules via lawsuit, likely in state court with a local judge. No one should confidently state that Luis won’t be able to suit up, regardless of how cut and dry the rules are on paper that the other 364 teams in college basketball were governed by in attempting to build their rosters. That’s the predicament the NCAA currently finds itself in, constantly under siege from schools and players that think the rules should apply to everyone other than them.
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