BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - LSU coach Will Wade has put RJ Luis’ college future to rest: it’s not happening in Baton Rouge.
Wade said Tuesday on a virtual SEC media day call that Luis, the former St. John’s standout who signed an NBA contract in 2025, will not play for LSU. He added that the program will handle the situation under SEC rules.
“We’re going to follow all the SEC protocols with him,” Wade said on a virtual call during SEC media day on Tuesday. “I think it’s been pretty clear what the SEC protocols are on all that. He didn’t travel with us to McNeese, and he hasn’t been rostered.”
That’s the clearest sign yet that LSU’s long-running eligibility puzzle has reached its conclusion with Luis. He had been part of the mix while the school waited on multiple rulings, and Wade said Sept. 23 that he had 15 players practicing since Sept. 2, including Luis. Luis had also been granted a preliminary injunction on Aug. 24 that allowed him to play college basketball.
But the SEC moved quickly after that. One day later, league presidents, chancellors and athletic directors approved rules designed to block schools from rostering athletes who fit any of three categories: players who previously declared for the NFL, NBA or WNBA draft and did not “appropriately withdraw” from those drafts; players who signed a contract with an NFL or other professional league, NBA or G League, or WNBA or affiliated team; and players who had been listed on a roster by any of those professional teams.
Luis’s path has been a winding one. He went undrafted in the 2025 NBA Draft, then signed a two-way contract with the Utah Jazz in June 2025.
Two months later, he was traded to the Boston Celtics, waived in October 2025, and then signed with the Maine Celtics, Boston’s G League affiliate. He was waived by the G League team before the season began because of an injury.
Before all that, he was a force at St. John’s.
During the 2024-25 season, Luis averaged 18.2 points and 7.2 rebounds per game and won Big East Player of the Year honors. He entered the transfer portal but never committed to a school, instead choosing to stay in the 2025 draft.
Wade also spent Tuesday trying to calm the broader chatter around LSU’s roster, which has been the subject of plenty of outside noise. Because fog in the Baton Rouge area kept him from flying to media day, he spoke on the SEC Network and then again on a separate teleconference with reporters.
On both calls, Wade said he expects his other players to be cleared by the NCAA in time for the season. He pointed to another scrimmage coming Wednesday and said LSU expects to have more players available than it did in Thursday’s 63-60 exhibition win over McNeese State at Townsley Law Arena.
“We have another scrimmage tomorrow (Wednesday), and we anticipate having a few more guys tomorrow than we had at McNeese,” Wade said on the SEC Network. “We have a pretty good idea of who’s (getting) eligible.”
He also pushed back on the way the roster situation has been portrayed.
“We don’t worry about what anybody else is saying or what anybody else really thinks,” he said. “We’re pretty secure in who we are and pretty secure in what we’re doing”.
The biggest current NCAA questions involve UCLA transfer guards Skyy Clark and Donovan Dent, LSU’s only players challenging for a fifth year of eligibility. Both are among more than 70 plaintiffs who received eligibility for a fifth season through a temporary restraining order in a California lawsuit against the NCAA.
A preliminary injunction hearing is scheduled for Oct. 20, and that ruling will help determine their status heading into the regular season. Dent, meanwhile, was among the players who took part in the McNeese exhibition.
The four notable players who were present but did not play in that game were 22-year-old Italian-Senegalese wing Saliou Niang, 23-year-old French center Brice Dessert, 24-year-old Israeli center Gilad Levy and Clark.
Wade said he’s willing to own whatever happens next.
“I’m the one who made the decision to do this,” he said. “If it doesn’t work, you can pin it right on me.
But we feel very confident about the group, and we feel very confident about the guys that we have. With our full roster, we have a puncher’s chance in most games.”
LSU opens the regular season against LSU New Orleans on Nov. 3 at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
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