If anything is certain about LSU’s men’s basketball roster three weeks before the season, it’s that RJ Luis won’t be part of it.
Coach Will Wade said Tuesday that the Tigers won’t fight the SEC over Luis’s eligibility, who has signed multiple professional contracts since his last college appearance.
“We’re going to follow all the SEC protocols with him,” Wade said. “I think it’s been pretty clear what the SEC protocols are around that. He didn’t travel with us to McNeese (for a recent exhibition game), and he hasn’t been rostered.”
Wade was referring to a rule the conference passed earlier this year that outlaws rostering players who have spent any time with a professional team from returning to college basketball or football at an SEC member institution.
Luis, a former Big East Player of the Year with St. John’s, went undrafted in 2025, signed a two-way contract with the Utah Jazz and was soon traded to the Boston Celtics. Luis was waived by Boston but signed an Exhibit 10 contract with the Celtics before being released again. He subsequently joined the G League’s Maine Celtics but never appeared in a regular-season game.
Luis attempted to return to college when he committed to LSU in May. But he was not part of the Tigers’ roster earlier this month when they played McNeese, one of Wade’s former schools, in an exhibition. LSU had just 10 players available, although only seven appeared in the game.
The Tigers’ revamped roster in Wade’s first season includes guards Donovan Dent and Skyy Clark, both of whom have received a fifth season of eligibility via a California court case.
They also hope to have Senegalese-Italian forward Saliou Niang, selected 58th in the 2025 NBA Draft, and French center Brice Dessert, who went undrafted. But their eligibility is in doubt because of a new SEC regulation banning players who did not “properly” withdraw from the NBA draft before attempting to return to college.
Wade didn’t have much clarity to offer, three weeks before the Tigers are scheduled to open the season against LSU New Orleans.
“We’ll see. We’ll see who gets eligible,” Wade said. “We feel good about that group getting eligible — the ones who were actually on our roster, the ones who are actually on our team. We feel like those guys will get eligible.”
–Field Level Media
