LSU Finally Reveals 10-Player Roster in Will Wade’s Exhibition Return

After keeping its team’s makeup shrouded in mystery all offseason, the LSU men’s basketball team finally revealed a 10-player roster during an exhibition match against McNeese on Thursday night.

The Tigers, who eked out a 63-60 win, played their five starters for almost the entire game. Head coach Will Wade, making his debut on the bench for LSU after being fired from the same position in 2022, described his program as “shorthanded.” Just one day before the game, the team only had four players listed on its online roster. Wade said that he didn’t find out until 3:30 p.m. local time Thursday that one of his starters, Michael Ruzic, was fully cleared to play against McNeese. 

“If this wasn’t McNeese, I would not have come tonight,” said Wade, who coached McNeese during his interlude between LSU stints. “This was not putting our guys in the best situation to come here and do this. … but ‘Neese sold tickets, I told them I was coming.”

For months, the Tigers have only listed those four players—transfers Austin Nunez, Abdi Bashir Jr., Mouhamed Dioubate, and Divine Ugochukwu—on their official roster. In September, Wade said that the program had been practicing with a full roster of players enrolled in school and signed to NIL/revenue-sharing deals. But despite naming some of these players individually, he had decided not to release the full list, implying there could be issues surrounding their eligibility. The team had 13 players at the time, between the four listed players, athletes Wade spoke about, and other reports.

On Thursday night, the team listed a 10-player roster for the non-televised exhibition, according to reporters on-site, suggesting these players are cleared by the NCAA to play this season. 

The starting lineup: Ugochukwu, Bashir, and Dioubate, as well as Donovan Dent (a former UCLA player who earned a fight year of eligibility through one of the lawsuits challenging the implementation of the NCAA’s age-based eligibility policy), and Ruzic (a Croatian player making his debut in NCAA basketball who came from the European pros). 

The rest of the roster consisted of UCLA transfer Skyy Clark (who won a fifth year in the same lawsuit as Dent), transfer Luke Stansbury, and incoming freshmen Jordan Bender, Brad Fife, and Strake Pearson.

However, the starting five played almost the entire game, with Bender subbing for 11 minutes and Pearson subbing for just two.

Wade, however, said he didn’t expect this to be the case for the rest of the preseason. 

“We have another two that are cleared to play but we wanted to make sure all the paperwork was final before we did it. We were not trying to do anything untoward towards any acronym,” he said, referring to the NCAA or perhaps the SEC.

Wade did not name those two players, and it was unclear if he was speaking about players rostered Thursday who didn’t play, or players who still weren’t rostered. But he has previously spoken about a couple other athletes who weren’t rostered on Thursday: international players Saliou Niang (Senegal) and Brice Dessert (France). Beyond those two, Israeli player Gilad Levy has also been reported to be on the team.

And then there’s perhaps the most controversial case: RJ Luis Jr. The former St. John’s standout had left college basketball for the NBA in 2025, and had signed two NBA contracts. Luis sued for the ability to return to LSU this past offseason, and won an injunction forcing the NCAA to allow him to do so. 

But Luis faces a battle with the SEC started by LSU football coach Lane Kiffin, who attempted to bring back two players from NFL training camp earlier this year. As a result of the football situation, the SEC published a rule preventing players who signed pro contracts from returning to college in multiple sports, and then sued LSU to enforce this policy. The litigation is ongoing.

The final decisions regarding the basketball program’s roster will be made in November, as each team is required to submit its final roster for the season one day before its first regular season game.

Wade, for his part, appeared excited about that prospect.

“Aw, shit,” he said. “We look good with the full group. I mean, damn. We look like a team that could compete with just about anybody when we got the full group.”