Pat Forde: The Truth Behind Will Wade’s ‘Gotcha Questions’ Rant

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Will Wade and LSU weren’t here for their scheduled appearance at SEC basketball media days Tuesday. Their plane was grounded by fog in Baton Rouge and couldn’t take off. It was an apt metaphor for Wade’s roster, which remains shrouded in mystery just weeks before the regular season tips off.

In lieu of in-person questions, LSU arranged a media Zoom call later in the day with Wade. For a couple of minutes, the coach dropped his perma-smug expression, defaulting to unhinged anger when asked specific questions about who is actually playing for the Tigers in 2026–27.

At one point earlier this month, LSU listed four players on its roster. The Tigers ended up putting seven on the floor in their first exhibition game last week. We’ll see who shows up for their second exhibition Wednesday. There is uncertainty across the nation as legal cases continue to unfold, but nowhere to the extent of LSU.

Hence the questions.

The first specific one pertained to RJ Luis Jr., who is the basketball version of the NFL players Lane Kiffin tried to get on his football roster. Luis was a standout player at St. John’s who went pro in 2025, was undrafted, then signed contracts with two NBA franchises. He signed with LSU on May 19 and was subsequently declared ineligible by the SEC, then obtained a motion for injunctive relief to join the Tigers. Wade hugged Luis outside the courtroom like the player had just beaten a life-threatening illness. 

Since then the question has loomed over 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 the SEC protocols with him” and that Luis has not been added to the roster. The last time the school tried to cross that Rubicon, everyone wound up in court and the conference threatened to throw LSU out. In the case of Luis, the Tigers have blinked.

I then asked Wade about Márcio Santos, a EuroLeague pro who went through the 2023 draft process and played five NBA Summer League games. This is when Wade launched, screaming about “gotcha questions.” Wade told local Louisiana media on Sept. 23 that Santos would not join LSU, and he subsequently signed a two-year contract in Europe. Wade seemed to think being asked about that was a massive affront.

“Pat, do you follow us at all?” Wade yelled. “Because Santos hadn’t been a member of our stuff since July. So, I don’t know where the hell you got that from.”

For the sake of accuracy, July and Sept. 23 are not the same thing. Anyway, the coach who has treated his roster like a covert operation was a lil’ 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 a Kentucky court ruling). None has been listed on an LSU roster yet.

“We’ll see who gets eligible,” Wade said, still seething but no longer screaming. “We feel good about that group getting eligible—the ones that were actually on our roster, the ones that were actually on our team, we feel like those guys will get eligible. How about that?”

My final question pertained to Brandon Bender, whose son, Jordan, is one of the handful of publicly eligible Tigers. Brandon Bender played briefly at Louisville in the 2001–02 season before being suspended by Rick Pitino and eventually leaving the program. He later was named “Representative 2” in a major NCAA infractions case that resulted in Central Florida getting a one-year postseason ban in basketball in 2013. More recently, Bender was involved in a custody dispute over an African 7-footer who had come to school in Louisville. Bender was listed as the player’s guardian.

In addition to having a son on the team, Brandon Bender has been thick as thieves for years with new LSU assistant coach Rick Stansbury, whose reputation within the SEC precedes him. It dates to his time as head coach at Mississippi State, when Stansbury’s recruiting tactics rankled 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 sum, this is how Wade’s prodigal return to the SEC started: a canceled flight, a temper tantrum of an interview and marginal clarity about who is actually going to suit up for Wade 2.0 at LSU.

If you thought he might be different this time around, guess what: he’s not. The Strong-Ass Offer Guy is who he is, to the core. He was fired by LSU four years ago for major NCAA violations, but it’s not like he’s coming back chastened.

Wade recently compared his roster building to the pioneering businesses of Airbnb and Uber. It was a strange flex, as if trampling NCAA and SEC rules to frantically scour the globe for players is the mark of a visionary. At least he didn’t go back down that road Tuesday.

Wade may well get several of his purgatory players in uniform and field a pretty good team. “I feel good about some of the information we have on the ground,” he said, and he’s probably telling the truth in this isolated instance. 

But there also may still be SEC resistance on at least one of those players, Niang, who basketball insiders believe is one of the highest-paid players in the conference. Even if he’s granted NCAA eligibility, the league has established a potential roadblock to him being in uniform. SEC policy, as of late August, prohibits rostering an athlete who has “previously declared for the NFL, NBA or WNBA draft and did not appropriately withdraw.” Commissioner Greg Sankey has been “authorized to enforce this expectation with penalties against member institutions.”

The Niang uncertainty adds to the tension between the league and the school. The SEC sued LSU in federal court in early September over recruiting the former NFL players, then called off a potential vote to expel the school from the league. But the lawsuit remains in place, and LSU resumed hostilities in late September by filing a motion to dismiss it. Tuesday was the deadline a judge requested for the league to respond to LSU’s motion to dismiss the suit.

From puppet master governor Jeff Landry on down, this is the path LSU has chosen: hiring Kiffin and playing eligibility games in football; hiring back Wade and playing eligibility games in men’s basketball; hiring Wade’s McNeese State posse, school president Wade Rousse and athletic director Heath Schroyer; lionizing combative women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey; fighting the SEC on multiple fronts; generally comporting itself with shameless defiance. The Tigers have weaponized a weird combativeness.

At SEC spring meetings, the most frequently heard words from coaches and administrators were, “Do we want to be governed or not?” Since then, LSU’s answer has essentially been, “Not really.”

It’s an odd stance for an accomplished athletic department. LSU doesn’t have to go rogue, stay rogue and revel in rogue; it just seems to be a choice that comes naturally.

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