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Will Wade is unapologetic with his social image or approach at roster building
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BATON ROUGE - Since Will Wade was re-hired by LSU in the spring, he has been quietly building his roster for the upcoming 2026-27 season.
As of Sept. 23, only four players are listed on LSU's official men's basketball roster. However, Wade told the media that they have been practicing with a 15-man team that are all signed to LSU and enrolled in school.
Wade did not want to speak on many specifics about who those players were.
"I mean, I can release it today, but there's some there's some reasons why I'm not, and I'm not saying you have to agree with it, but it's in the best interest of a couple of the players for for some different reasons, and so I'm just I'm always going to err on their side. But I mean I think it's I think it's pretty widely known by the people who cover us. I just said the one kid who's not here. I think I think you can pretty much figure out who the 15 guys are that we have out there practicing, and so you know at this point we'll we'll we'll make sure we get the roster updated when when we feel we feel like it's in in the best interest of those of all those guys," Wade said.
Through the offseason, reports have been made about Wade getting players from international professional teams, and others from the transfer portal that are apart of the 2022 class trying to get a fifth year of eligibility. While that method of roster building may not be the most traditional or conventional way of doing it, Wade says that method is temporary.
He said, "This is a one-year deal. We're, you know, what we're doing now. I mean, we're just going to get back to high school recruiting. I think the one thing that's you know, I think one thing that's grown is LSU's brands even stronger just across everything since I was here the first time, but I mean, look, people still want to be a part of the culture in Louisiana."
From his method of getting players to LSU, to his exit at NC State, Wade has become a sort of "villain" personality in college basketball. While he hopes when he returns to McNeese for an exhibition game he won't be booed by fans, he also does not care what anyone outside of the LSU program thinks.
"So, like, just because it's unconventional, doesn't mean it's not going to work. That may not work. If it doesn't work, write about what an idiot I am. I understand that. But just because it's unconventional, like I told our guys, we're going to be unconventional. We're going to be unapologetic about it. It is what it is," Wade said.
"But I felt this is the best way to try to deliver a championship team for LSU from the jump that gives us the best chance to jumpstart our program. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I'll take it and we'll restart next year. But we ain't gonna be worse than we've been. So I mean, hell, what's what's what's what's what's the downside? And I don't see much downside in that. We're giving ourselves a chance of incredible upside, and if we're no good, I mean, all right, we just got to live through one more bad year. We've had a few of them," he added.
LSU will play their first exhibition game at McNeese on Oct. 8 at 6:30 p.m. They'll host UCF on Oct. 14 before closing their exhibition games at Florida State on Oct. 24.
The Tigers will open the season at home on Nov. 3 against LSU-New Orleans.
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