Fog surrounds LSU’s men’s basketball team as it rushes to fill out a roster

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Dense fog rolled into Baton Rouge on Tuesday morning, bad enough to earn an advisory from the Weather Channel, and thick enough to do the one thing no one else in college athletics seemingly can do: Stop LSU.

The Tigers’ entourage, scheduled to appear here for SEC Basketball Media Day, could not take off due to the fog, grounding them for their session, the league announced.

Who says Mother Nature doesn’t have a sense of humor? A program shrouded in controversy, willing to bring all the smoke and run around like college sports’ Pigpen (of Peanuts fame), gets stuck in Baton Rouge because of fog.

“Next year maybe we’ll all have a little fog, right?” one coach said with a chuckle.

One month after football coach Lane Kiffin fought to suit up two would-be NFL players in a college game, LSU men’s basketball coach Will Wade is attempting to build a roster with two players who went through the NBA Draft process, two others who have played professionally overseas and two who are part of court orders seeking eligibility for fifth-year college players (Donovan Dent has been granted an injunction; Skyy Clark has not).

The man who, in his first iteration at LSU got fired for making “strong-ass” offers against NCAA rules, now says he is simply being “unconventional” in his attempt to flout loopholes and lean into injunctions.

Dylan Buell/Getty Images

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Wade’s unconventional attempt at roster building is, in order, against SEC rules, against NCAA rules and contingent on courts ordering against the NCAA, which is currently 3-0 in appeals. The upshot: Three weeks before its first real game, LSU has 10 players listed on its webpage. Along with Dent, whose status could change on appeal, one is the son of his assistant coach, and another is a 5-foot-10-inch, 150-pound freshman.

“We’ll have a few more guys eligible for our next exhibition game tomorrow,” Wade said on the SEC Network via Zoom. “And we anticipate building this thing as we head toward November 13.”

There is no evidence that that will, in fact, happen.

Pressed by a reporter on a Zoom call about specific players, Wade grew agitated and defiant. But in his tirade of a response, he also said some truths.

One: RJ Luis “is not rostered.” Luis, the one-time Big East Player of the Year who signed multiple NBA contracts, won a court injunction in August allowing him to play, but Wade said the school was “following SEC protocols,” which includes prohibiting players who have signed pro deals to compete. Two: Marcio Santos is officially gone, having left LSU to sign a pro deal in Spain.

Frank Franklin II/AP

To be clear, LSU is not alone. Back in the day, coaches hit the courts in Las Vegas and at Peach Jam, the summer recruiting locales, to find players. Now, they await word from the actual courts.

As coaches took the podium here, a judge in Colorado was hearing an NCAA appeal about the eligibility of thousands of would-be fifth years. Missouri coach Dennis Gates moved up his appearance here by a day so he could join Mark Mitchell, who signed what’s called an NBA Exhibit 10 contract, at a hearing on Wednesday to determine if he could play. Tennessee’s Jalen Washington remains ineligible after the NCAA won a stay on a temporary injunction that would have allowed the Vanderbilt transfer to play.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma coach Porter Moser opened his remarks by saying he was excited to talk “retention,” but admitted that to keep players he had to “shrink the gap.” In other words, scrounge up more money.

With its small numbers, college basketball is especially susceptible to the high risk/high reward world of current roster construction. But Wade is not assuming risk; he is all in. Whereas Kiffin was trying to clear two guys on roster of 105, he is rolling the dice on what will be the difference between fielding an actual SEC team or a glorified CYO program. And he is doing it after the SEC threatened everything up to, and including, expulsion if Kiffin didn’t back down.

Already poked, the league bear hasn’t exactly gone into hibernation, either. The SEC’s lawsuit is still out there, the league due to file a response to LSU’s motion to dismiss on Tuesday, and one of the players Wade is trying to clear, Saliou Niang, was drafted 58th by the Cavaliers. Though he didn’t sign a pro contract, the SEC policy says that any athlete who has “previously declared for the NFL, NBA or WNBA and did not properly withdraw” cannot compete.

But LSU is as all-in as its coach. As with Kiffin, when the governor shoved former athletic director Scott Woodward out the door when he balked at hiring the coveted coach and all of his baggage, LSU has greased the skids for Wade. He is surrounded by people who gave him his initial cleanse.

A year after LSU fired Wade amid an NCAA investigation that included five Level I violations, McNeese State hired him, doubling down on his renegade reputation. In a marketing campaign, Wade donned a black cowboy hat.

The university president who OK’d the hire at McNeese – Wade Rousse — is now the president at LSU. A wealthy construction company owner who befriended Wade while he was in Lake Charles, Lee Mallett, is now LSU’s chairman of the board, and Wade’s former athletic director, Heath Schroyer, is now not just a senior associate AD for the Tigers. Wade’s contract specifies that he reports directly to Schroyer, and not AD Verge Ausberry.

These are his people, and if they don’t necessarily endorse the renegade, they don’t mind Will being Will. At a local rotary club meaning, he joked about joining Kiffin on staff, saying he’s no longer the most controversial coach on campus, and zinged his own checkered pass.

“Everyone says it’s ‘name, image and likeness,’” he said of NIL. “I say, it’s ‘now it’s legal.’”

Nor has he backed down on the risk he’s taking, arguing that it will beat the 3-15 league finish from a year ago.

“So I mean, hell, what’s the downside?” he said earlier this year. “We’re giving ourselves a chance at incredible upside, and if we’re no good, all right, we just have to live through one more bad year. We’ve had a few of them.”

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This is about nothing more – or less – than winning. Five years ago, LSU brought Kim Mulkey in to resuscitate its women’s basketball program, ignoring the controversy that trailed her like a train of sequins off one of her gaudy pantsuits. Two years later, she won them a national title.

The football team hasn’t won a national title since 2019. LSU opened the season ranked 11th. The basketball team has never won it all, but Wade turned the Tigers relevant for the first time since Shaq and Dale Brown. In five seasons, he went to three NCAA Tournaments and won the SEC regular-season title in 2019.

To make a fire, you need some smoke.

Or at least a little fog.

米切尔·斯卡利昂/路易斯安那州立大学体育部/盖蒂图片社

周二早上，浓雾笼罩了巴吞鲁日，浓到天气频道都发布了预警，而且浓到足以做到大学体育界其他任何球队都做不到的一件事：阻止路易斯安那州立大学的比赛。

联盟宣布，原定在此参加 SEC 篮球媒体日的老虎队随行人员因大雾无法起飞，被迫取消了采访。

谁说大自然母亲没有幽默感？一个充满争议、一心想制造各种噱头、像大学体育界的“猪圈”（《花生漫画》中的人物）一样四处奔波的项目，却因为大雾被困在了巴吞鲁日。

“明年我们可能都会有点迷糊，对吧？”一位教练笑着说。

一个月前，橄榄球教练莱恩·基芬 (Lane Kiffin) 为让两名有志成为 NFL 球员的球员参加大学比赛而奔走呼吁。如今，路易斯安那州立大学 (LSU) 男篮教练威尔·韦德 (Will Wade) 正在尝试组建一支球队，其中包括两名参加过 NBA 选秀的球员、两名曾在海外打过职业比赛的球员，以及两名因法院命令而获得五年级大学球员参赛资格的球员（多诺万·登特 (Donovan Dent) 已获得禁令；斯凯·克拉克 (Skyy Clark) 尚未获得禁令）。

这位曾在路易斯安那州立大学 (LSU) 担任主教练，却因违反 NCAA 规则发出“强硬”邀请而被解雇的人，现在声称他只是在试图钻法律漏洞、利用禁令方面采取“非常规”的做法。

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路易斯安那州立大学篮球队和前任复合了。事情听起来有多混乱，事实也的确如此。

韦德这种非传统的阵容组建方式，首先违反了东南联盟（SEC）的规定，其次违反了美国大学体育协会（NCAA）的规定，最后取决于法院是否驳回NCAA的上诉——目前NCAA在上诉中保持全胜（3胜0负）。结果是：距离首场正式比赛还有三周，路易斯安那州立大学（LSU）的官网上只列出了10名球员。除了丹特（他的状态可能会因上诉而改变）之外，还有一名是他的助理教练的儿子，另一名是身高5英尺10英寸、体重150磅的大一新生。

韦德通过Zoom视频会议在SEC电视网表示：“明天我们下一场表演赛会有更多球员可以上场。我们预计在11月13日之前，球队会不断进步。”

目前没有任何证据表明这种情况真的会发生。

在一次Zoom视频通话中，当记者追问韦德关于特定球员的问题时，韦德变得激动而咄咄逼人。但在他激烈的回应中，也包含了一些事实。

第一：RJ·路易斯“不在球队名单上”。路易斯曾是Big East联盟年度最佳球员，并与多支NBA球队签约。他于8月份赢得了一项法院禁令，允许他参赛，但韦德表示，学校“正在遵循SEC联盟的规定”，其中包括禁止已签约职业球队的球员参赛。第二：马西奥·桑托斯已正式离队，他已离开路易斯安那州立大学，与西班牙职业球队签约。

弗兰克·富兰克林二世/美联社

需要说明的是，路易斯安那州立大学并非个例。过去，教练们会前往拉斯维加斯和桃子杯篮球赛（夏季招募活动）等场地寻找球员。而现在，他们只能等待球场上的消息。

当教练们在此地登上讲台时，科罗拉多州的一位法官正在审理NCAA关于数千名有望进入第五年的球员参赛资格的上诉。密苏里大学教练丹尼斯·盖茨提前一天出席了周三的听证会，以便与马克·米切尔一同前往。米切尔签署了一份所谓的NBA Exhibit 10合同，听证会将决定他是否能够参赛。田纳西大学的杰伦·华盛顿仍然没有参赛资格，此前NCAA赢得了一项临时禁令的暂缓执行令，该禁令原本允许这位从范德比尔特大学转学而来的球员参赛。

与此同时，俄克拉荷马大学教练波特·莫泽在开场白中表示，他很兴奋能谈到“留住球员”的问题，但也承认为了留住球员，他必须“缩小差距”。换句话说，就是想方设法筹集更多资金。

由于球员人数较少，大学篮球特别容易受到当前阵容构建中高风险高回报模式的影响。但韦德并非在冒险，而是孤注一掷。基芬当时试图从105人的大名单中剔除两名球员，而韦德则是在赌一把，赌这笔交易最终会让他组建一支真正的SEC球队，还是一支徒有其名的天主教青年组织（CYO）球队。而且，他是在SEC威胁要采取包括开除在内的一切手段之后才做出这一决定的。

联盟这头“熊”虽然已被激怒，但并未就此罢休。SEC的诉讼仍在进行中，联盟将于周二对路易斯安那州立大学的驳回动议作出回应。韦德试图为萨利乌·尼昂洗清嫌疑的球员之一，在选秀大会上被克利夫兰骑士队以第58顺位选中。尽管他没有签署职业合同，但SEC的政策规定，任何“曾宣布参加NFL、NBA或WNBA选秀但未按规定撤回”的运动员都不得参赛。

但路易斯安那州立大学（LSU）和他们的教练一样全力以赴。就像当年基芬执教时，州长因为前体育主管斯科特·伍德沃德不愿聘用这位炙手可热的教练及其所有“包袱”而将其扫地出门一样，LSU也为韦德铺平了道路。他身边的人正是当初帮助他重获新生的人。

在路易斯安那州立大学因韦德涉嫌五项一级违规行为而对其进行调查一年后，麦克尼斯州立大学聘用了他，进一步巩固了他桀骜不驯的名声。在一次营销活动中，韦德戴上了一顶黑色牛仔帽。

批准麦克尼斯州立大学聘用韦德·鲁斯的那位大学校长，如今已成为路易斯安那州立大学的校长。一位名叫李·马利特的富有的建筑公司老板，在韦德于查尔斯湖任职期间与他结识，如今已是路易斯安那州立大学的董事会主席。而韦德的前体育主管希思·施罗耶，现在不仅是老虎队的高级副体育主管，而且还是路易斯安那州立大学的高级副体育主管。韦德的合同明确规定，他直接向施罗耶汇报工作，而不是向体育主管弗吉·奥斯伯里汇报。

这些人都是他的人，即便他们未必认同他这种特立独行的做法，也不介意威尔做他自己。在当地一家扶轮社，他开玩笑说要加入基芬的教练组，还说自己不再是校园里最具争议的教练了，并自嘲地回敬了他那句经典的格子传球。

“大家都说这是‘姓名、形象和肖像权’，”他谈到NIL（姓名、形象和肖像权）时说。“我说，现在是‘合法化’了。”

他也没有放弃自己所承担的风险，并辩称这将比去年 3 胜 15 负的联赛成绩要好。

“所以我的意思是，见鬼，有什么坏处呢？”他今年早些时候说道。“我们给自己创造了巨大的上升空间，如果失败了，好吧，我们只需要再熬过一个糟糕的年份。我们已经经历过好几个糟糕的年份了。”

泰勒·考夫曼/盖蒂图片社

这一切，归根结底，就是为了赢球。五年前，路易斯安那州立大学（LSU）聘请金·穆尔基重振女子篮球队，全然不顾围绕在她身上的争议，就像她那身艳丽裤装上缀满的亮片一样挥之不去。两年后，她带领球队赢得了全国冠军。

自2019年以来，这支橄榄球队就再未染指过全国冠军。路易斯安那州立大学（LSU）本赛季开局排名第11位。篮球队也从未赢得过总冠军，但韦德教练让这支球队自奥尼尔和戴尔·布朗之后首次重回巅峰。执教的五个赛季里，他三次率队打入NCAA锦标赛，并在2019年赢得了东南联盟（SEC）常规赛冠军。

生火需要烟雾。

或者至少有点雾。