By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
LSUt had a chance to win its last exhibition game at Florida State last week.
The Tigers trailed 89-87 in the final seconds and had a chance to set up a three-point shot for the win. And shooting guard Skyy Clark, a fifth-year senior transfer from UCLA, was on fire, having just hit three from beyond the arc since the 1:30 mark to get LSU within range.
Point guard Donovan Dent, a fifth-year senior transfer from UCLA as well, inbounded and looked for Clark, his former Bruin teammate. But Dent threw it away for his fourth turnover with 2.1 seconds to play. And FSU won, 89-87.
LSU coach Will Wade, though, did not jump all over Dent, who did finish the game with 24 points and nine assists with a steal on 9-of-17 shooting, including 3 of 6 from three-point range.
“One of the things I like, he lets you play,” Dent said. “You make mistakes, and he’s not going to harp on you and not get down on you. He just has a good next-play mentality.”
Kentucky senior forward transfer Mo Dioubate, who was seated next to Dent at the podium during player interviews, interjected, “Yeah.”
Letting Dent play, in particular, has been a good strategy so far for Wade, who opens his second term as LSU’s coach on Tuesday night against LSU-New Orleans (7 p.m., SEC Network+) in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
Dent had 21 points and 11 assists with nine rebounds in the Tigers’ 85-81 win over Central Florida on Oct. 14. He had 12 points with five rebounds in the 63-60 exhibition opening win at McNeese State on Oct. 8.
“And he’s going to rally for his players,” Dent said. “I think that’s one of the best things that we’re all recognizing so far. That’s all you really want from a coach – confidence in you from him.”
That’s one of the reasons Dent, a native of the Los Angeles area, finds himself 1,800 miles away from home in Baton Rouge.
“It was a really weird recruiting process, because it was so late into the recruiting process because of the law and all that fifth-year stuff,” Dent said.
Dent and Clark sort of fell into Wade’s lap just two months after Wade became LSU’s coach last March and arrived in need of players after one season at North Carolina State. Wade was at LSU previously from 2017-22 before being fired for major recruiting violations.
The NCAA then changed a significant rule just last June, giving college players in all sports who began their careers in the 2023-24 academic year five seasons in five years instead of four in five. And the NCAA did not grandfather in players who began their college careers in 2022-23. Dent began his career at UCLA in the 2022-23 academic year at New Mexico before playing last year at UCLA. He and thousands of athletes from the 2022-23 class began to join lawsuits against the NCAA, and most have won, at least temporarily, like Dent and Clark, with restraining orders from judges.
“But he was one of the first coaches to reach out to me,” Dent said of Wade. “And that’s a priority for me. I was prioritized by him, so he was a priority for me. That was one of the main reasons we connected.”
The fact that Dent’s backcourt teammate from UCLA also journeyed down south has only made the connection stronger.
Clark scored 21 points with eight rebounds and three assists at Florida State as he hit 7 of 12 shots from three-point range. Dent scored 13.3 points with 7.5 assists a game last season at UCLA, while Clark averaged 11.5 points and 42 percent from three-point range and 82 percent from the line.
Wade’s fast break recruiting landed quite a duo from UCLA.
“I know you guys saw the connection,” Dent said of Clark. “It’s just like thing one and thing two. We just know each other out there on the court at all times. It was a lot of fun having him out there.”
And it could be fun all season, although both Dent and Clark are considered “temporarily eligible” by Wade as their court cases against the NCAA could be appealed at any time, conceivably making them ineligible.
“I just trust what coach Wade says about it,” Dent said. “I don’t really look too much into it. He made it clear that we’re going to be good.”
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