Only days before the LSU men's basketball program's exhibition opener earlier this month, who would suit up for the Tigers was still shrouded in mystery.
There were just four players listed on the roster on the LSU athletics website, not even enough to fill out a starting five.
The uncertainty stemmed from new coach Will Wade's audacious strategy to transform LSU from bottom feeder to championship contender in a single offseason. Wade primarily targeted players who didn't fit the traditional NCAA model, former NBA Draft entrants facing significant eligibility hurdles, guys who either had extensive professional basketball experience overseas or had already completed four full seasons at the college level.
Former 2025 Cleveland Cavaliers draft pick Saliou Niang, 22, is among the players still trying to get eligible to play for LSU this coming season, as are fellow European pros Brice Dessert, 23, of France and Gilad Levy, 24, of Israel. The Tigers also hope to have former UCLA guards Donovan Dent, 22, and Skyy Clark, 23, both of whom once seemed to exhaust their collegiate eligibility last spring.
For months, Wade even explored the possibility of rostering former St. John's standout RJ Luis, who entered the 2025 NBA Draft after his junior season and went unselected before signing two-way contracts with the Utah Jazz and Boston Celtics. Wade only scrapped the idea when the SEC hastily adopted a policy declaring players like Luis ineligible and LSU decided that it didn't have the stomach to escalate its ongoing war with the league.
"Like I told our guys, we're going to be unconventional and we're going to be unapologetic about it," Wade told reporters in Baton Rouge in late September. "This is who we are. This is what we're doing. This is the path that we charted. We're going to go down it.
"And hey, look, I get it. When you do stuff that's unconventional, they're waiting for you to fail. Everybody's waiting for us to fail. That's fine. If we fail, I own it. I own it. But I felt this is the best way to try to deliver a championship team for LSU from the jump."
The turmoil at LSU is the most extreme example of the roster chaos that has engulfed college basketball this offseason. It was already messy when the legal challenges to NCAA eligibility rules came from overseas and G League professionals who realized they could make far more money playing college basketball. Then the NCAA chose to exclude players from the high school class of 2022 from its June ruling granting current athletes a fifth season of college eligibility, resulting in an offseason of endless legal injunctions, appeals and attorney fees.
Players who once would have been content to pursue professional basketball are challenging NCAA eligibility rules in court to gain access to the lucrative NIL payouts top college programs are offering. And college coaches fearful of ceding a competitive advantage to an opponent are taking on these dubious eligibility cases because they believe the potential payoff outweighs the downside.
The result is a sport where the rules of free agency are inconsistently applied and the available talent pool changes by the day … yet we're supposed to pretend a champion will be crowned fairly.
An Indiana judge granted three-time all-Big 12 point guard Tamin Lipsey a fifth season of eligibility in late September, but the NCAA is appealing that decision. As a result, less than two weeks before Iowa State's season opener, head coach TJ Otzelberger is preparing for the scenario where Lipsey reassumes the starting point guard role and another where he never dons a Cyclones jersey again.
Also in eligibility limbo are three potential starters who Kansas coach Bill Self added within the past month, including 24-year-old sixth-year senior Trey Kaufman-Renn, a second-round draft pick of the Minnesota Timberwolves this past June. The Jayhawks would vault from fringe Top 25 team to potential national title contender if Kaufman-Renn, Melvin Council and Tre White all win their legal fight for a fifth season of eligibility.
It's a similar story everywhere from Florida, to Tennessee, to Gonzaga, to Louisville, to Texas Tech, to Michigan, to Miami, to Missouri, to St. John's, to Arizona. With exhibition play already underway and season openers approaching, coaches at those schools are waiting to find out whether potential impact players will win lawsuits against the NCAA and gain the right to play this season.
The NCAA is responsible for the "chaos," Florida coach Todd Golden said last Wednesday when speaking to reporters at SEC media days. The dozens of lawsuits were an inevitable outcome, according to Golden, "when you have a rule that clearly states that players get five years of eligibility within a five-year clock and you're trying to arbitrarily carve out a class to prevent chaos."
"I truly just believe that the class of '22 deserves to play," Golden added. "Everybody has started school. Everybody is in the middle of their semesters. There's not guys or gals just hanging out there waiting to see [the outcome of a case] to kind of jump back and re-enroll in play. We're long past that conversation that was taking place in May and June. At this point the NCAA is trying to argue that they're trying to prevent chaos, but they're really causing it."
One day earlier, during his appearance at SEC media days, Tennessee coach Rick Barnes took a similar stance.
"I just hate what's going on with all this," Barnes said. "It's going to be a great year in college basketball, and we shouldn't have any of this hovering over it right now, but it looks like it's going to do it all year long."
Going from the pros to college
For years, the best players in college basketball were always in a rush to move on. Teenagers who were considered borderline NBA prospects often turned pro anyway, lured by the desire for immediate financial relief that college programs could not legally provide.
The calculus began to shift five years ago with the dawning of college basketball's NIL era. By last year, players with multiple years of professional basketball experience were fighting to enter college because the six- and seven-figure paydays dangled by power-conference programs dwarf the salaries offered by overseas clubs or the G League.
Virginia's leading scorer last season was a 22-year-old Belgian forward who was a key contributor for a professional club in Spain's top division the previous two years. Louisville's top big man was a 22-year-old German who the previous year was one of the Bundesliga's most efficient players. North Carolina started a 22-year-old guard from Montenegro who previously averaged 14.9 points per game in Southeastern Europe's top league.
The NCAA's lenience in granting those players college eligibility emboldened other programs to test the limits of the governing body's tolerance. In late December, Baylor announced the midseason acquisition of EuroLeague center James Nnaji, the former 31st pick in the 2023 NBA Draft. Weeks later, Alabama briefly added G League center Charles Bediako nearly three years after he first withdrew from school to declare for the NBA Draft.
Coaches who have targeted professional players this offseason have discovered that the NCAA is no longer so forgiving. The governing body is investigating the academic transcripts of overseas professionals and whether the compensation that they have received exceeds "actual and necessary expenses." As a result, many top international prospects have either been turned away or remain in eligibility limbo with real games less than three weeks away.
Izan Almansa, a 21-year-old Spanish professional, has yet to be cleared to play for Gonzaga this coming season. Nor has Senegalese forward Babacar Sane of St. John's or any of LSU's trio of international newcomers. The NCAA deemed prized Israeli guard Noam Yaacov ineligible to play for Utah, the university announced in August. Meanwhile, Lithuanian prospect Mantas Rubstavicius has reportedly filed a lawsuit against the NCAA after the governing body ruled that he could not play for Auburn.
Promising former G League wing Dink Pate had been fighting with the NCAA for months over his eligibility to play for Providence this season. Last Friday, the 20-year-old Pate chose to withdraw from Providence and try to secure a spot on a G League roster rather than risk being denied by the NCAA and not having a professional option to fall back on.
"Dink Pate will always be a Friar, and we fully support his decision given the uncertainty of his situation," Providence coach Bryan Hodgson posted to social media. "Fair, no ... not even close. But life is not fair, and the Friars will fight on!"
What to do with the Class of 2022?
For the NCAA, the bigger eligibility mess is that so many athletes who graduated high school in 2022 and just exhausted their college eligibility are seeking the right to play a fifth season. Dozens of athletes have filed lawsuits, with litigation spanning multiple different states and sports.
Last Tuesday, the governor of Ohio even issued an executive order with the goal of preventing the NCAA from barring any class of 2022 athlete at a school in the state from playing a fifth year. In response, the NCAA has sued Ohio governor Mike DeWine, calling his executive order a "misguided attempt" to give Ohio colleges a "hall pass to break rules."
Ask college coaches about this issue, and many insist that the NCAA should have seen this flurry of legal challenges coming. After all, athletes who graduated high school before 2022 had the right to play five seasons due to COVID exemptions and athletes in the 2023 high school class or later will also get five seasons due to the five-in-five rule that the NCAA adopted this past June.
To Gonzaga coach Mark Few, the fairest outcome would be that "the NCAA just lets these guys play." Of course, Few has a stake in this fight. Three Gonzaga players are challenging the NCAA's decision in court not to grant players in the 2022 high school class a fifth season of eligibility: forward Chauncey Wiggins and guards Javon Bennett and Xaivian Lee.
"It's really unfortunate that they're taking this stance," Few told reporters in Spokane earlier this month. "I'm not sure why we're targeting this one specific group."
In August, Colorado federal judge Charlotte N. Sweeney sided with Few, declaring that "the NCAA is in a bind of its own making." Sweeney granted a temporary injunction allowing all high school class of 2022 athletes who had exhausted their fourth season of college eligibility to play a fifth year in 2026-27.
The NCAA has since appealed that decision in the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals and has received a temporary stay, sidelining the class of 2022 athletes while the case is sorted out. During full oral arguments this past Tuesday, the appellate judges appeared highly skeptical of the athletes' case, suggesting that they are likely to side with the NCAA and reverse Sweeney's decision.
That would be a major win for the NCAA, but it wouldn't set a national precedent. Judges in the 40-plus states outside the 10th Circuit's jurisdiction could still rule in favor of class of 2022 athletes seeking a fifth season.
A judge in Jefferson County, Kentucky, heard arguments in one such lawsuit this past Wednesday. Thirty athletes across the state of Kentucky, including prospective Louisville basketball players Seth Trimble and LJ Wells, are seeking a fifth year of eligibility.
The cross examination of Louisville coach Pat Kelsey became spicy when NCAA attorneys accused him of performing for the cameras. Kelsey had previously argued that the NCAA was responsible for the eligibility turmoil across college basketball by fighting against the class of 2022's request for a fifth year.
"End the chaos and let this entire class have their fifth year," Kelsey shouted. "It's a no brainer."
Nowhere is there more roster chaos than LSU, where Wade based his entire roster strategy on eligibility risks rather than merely taking chances on one or two players. Ten players are now listed on the Tigers' roster, but just seven played in their opening exhibition game against McNeese on Oct. 8 and just six played against UCF six days later.
"I would love to update you," Wade told reporters last Wednesday, "but because all my words are being used against us, I'm not going to — I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm not — but I'm not going to talk anything about eligibility right now."
Welcome to Law & Order, the college basketball edition. The team that navigates the court system best will be the one that cuts down the nets.