By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
LSU basketball coach Will Wade’s roster is now potentially up to a whopping 13 players for the 2026-27 season.
Wade, who will begin his second term as LSU’s coach on Nov. 3 against LSU-New Orleans after previously coaching the Tigers from 2017-22, has gained a commitment from 7-foot-3 center Gilad Levy. He has not played since the 2024-25 season for the Afula professional team in Afula, Israel. Levy is a project prospect as he averaged only 1.7 points in 5.6 minutes of action that season.
In 51 professional games, Levy, 24, has 16 blocked shots and 113 rebounds, but he is a big body.
In the last week, though, Wade has added three elite players via the NCAA Transfer Portal.
On Monday, Wade got perhaps his best player for this coming season in senior forward signee RJ Luis, the former Big East Player of the Year from 2024-25 at St. John’s who averaged 18.2 points and 7.2 rebounds that season. Baton Rouge 19th Judicial District Judge Ronald Johnson ruled Luis eligible for 2026-27 despite Luis clearly breaking NCAA eligibility rules by signing contracts with two NBA teams after leaving St. John’s to enter the NBA Draft and not getting picked. He signed with LSU in May.
Before that, Wade gained commitments from two fifth-year seniors from UCLA in point guard Donovan Dent and guard Skyy Clark via another judge’s recent ruling supporting lawsuits against the NCAA by athletes seeking an extra year in the 2026-27 season. Dent and Clark and other class of 2022 members in various sports nationwide sued because the NCAA’s new rule allowing athletes to play five seasons in five years instead of four in five begins with players in the class of 2023, skipping 2022.
Dent averaged 13.3 points and 7.6 assists a game for UCLA last season, while Clark scored 11.5 a game.
The only players listed on Wade’s current roster at the moment are four transfers – small forward Mouhamed Dioubate of Kentucky, guard Abdi Bashri of Kansas State, point guard Divine Ugochukwu of Michigan State and unranked guard Austin Nunez of Texas-San Antonio. Levy, Luis, Dent and Clark are expected to be added to the official roster at some point this week for a total of eight.
Also expected to be added to the LSU roster this week are four other international commitments in forward Saliou Niang of Italy, center Marcio Santos of Brazil, center Brice Dessert of France and forward Michael Ruzic of Croatia. That makes 12.
Wade also has a commitment from unranked forward Jordan Bender of Northside Christian School in St. Petersburg, Florida, for 13.
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