re: MBB Offseason '26 Transfer Portal / HS Tracker

I agree with you I would want Montgomery and Alston. I know we probably hit the portal hard for 27-28 but having a foundation of Montgomery and Alston or Montogomery and Gibson is massive. Cause we likely only bring a few guys back from this current team. Dent, Clark, Luis (if eligble). Nunez are all 5th year seniors. Dioubate, Bashir, and Ugochukwu can come back under the 5 for 5 and im not sure Dessert, Niang, Levy, and Ruciz are at LSU for multiple years. So Wade for 27-28 likely gets 2 to 3 more HS recruits and loads up in portal.

Sarcasm went right over your head

And I have autism, I’m not supposed to tell sarcasm

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It’s gonna be fun to see LSU in the mix for the big fish again. Even if this season doesn’t go the best, with the quality of talent we’ll be bringing in, there’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll be going deep into March over the next 5 years.

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We all hope so, but what is the reason Wade was not able to sign a bigger eligible group from the portal. There are only two players who were significant players at their previous stops, another was a role player, an another played at a lower level school. Only one even averaged double figures. It will all work out if Dent, Clark and Luis are eligible, but not good if they are not.

Our situation was a roster with 0/15 players, a new coach, and the worst team in the SEC. Because of that, we needed to put together a team that was not only both good on the court but also fit together as a team. Older, more experienced players — internationals and 5th year players — are the perfect fit for this type of scenario, especially when the turnaround has to happen in only five months.

Even if Dent, Clark, and Luis are not eligible, which is unlikely, I still know for a fact that we have the pieces to not go 3-15 in conference play, nor finish the season sitting at the bottom of the SEC standings like last year.

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Our situation was a roster with 0/15 players, a new coach, and the worst team in the SEC. Because of that, we needed to put together a team that was not only both good on the court but also fit together as a team. Older, more experienced players — internationals and 5th year players — are the perfect fit for this type of scenario, especially when the turnaround has to happen in only five months.

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New coaches starting with an empty roster is pretty common. It's not like Wade faced some unheard of situation.

As he discussed months ago, and again last week, this is a purposeful approach to try to make LSU not just competitive, but really good this season. Over the last decade we've seen a bigger and bigger impact of international players in the US. Illinois went to the Final Four last with several international players making up the core of their roster. The reason is because for the first time ever it's more lucrative for many international players to play US college basketball than pro basketball overseas. That anomaly is going to be closed by the NCAA. Wade knows that and has mentioned it multiple times as the reason why LSU is taking this approach. It's a big swing in hopes turning it in to a big payoff immediately.

Best case scenario this team is really good right away. Worst case, LSU is a bottom half SEC team and essentially in the same place it has been for the last 4 years with roster building returning to "normal" next season.

After sitting through a 4 year waste of time that was NEVER going to be good under the previous coach, I'm willing to live with the downside risk of one more year of poor results for the potential benefit of a great season.

Goodman and co are foaming at the mouth to celebrate news tigerdroppings knew last month lol

Goodman is holding on to anything he possibly can that will help protect his alternate reality where Wade isn’t a winner at LSU. He’d fall for a fake AI Facebook article boomers love to share if it was derogatory towards Pear

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New coaches starting with an empty roster is pretty common. It's not like Wade faced some unheard of situation.

As he discussed months ago, and again last week, this is a purposeful approach to try to make LSU not just competitive, but really good this season. Over the last decade we've seen a bigger and bigger impact of international players in the US. Illinois went to the Final Four last with several international players making up the core of their roster. The reason is because for the first time ever it's more lucrative for many international players to play US college basketball than pro basketball overseas. That anomaly is going to be closed by the NCAA. Wade knows that and has mentioned it multiple times as the reason why LSU is taking this approach. It's a big swing in hopes turning it in to a big payoff immediately.

Best case scenario this team is really good right away. Worst case, LSU is a bottom half SEC team and essentially in the same place it has been for the last 4 years with roster building returning to "normal" next season.

After sitting through a 4 year waste of time that was NEVER going to be good under the previous coach, I'm willing to live with the downside risk of one more year of poor results for the potential benefit of a great season.

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Best case is way better, but the worst case is way worse. We could've still been way better if we had pursued 9 clearly eligible high quality players, and then 6 risky high reward players. With the money Wade has to work with, we could've gotten 9 players that could've made us a top 25 team, and then the other 6 could've given us a high chance of a national championship. Instead we have 3 quality players, 1 mediocre, 1 low risk, 8 high risk, and 2 unknown risks.

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If he wanted to take an aggressive approach to roster building, why didn't he go all in on the 5 in 5 guys? The focus on foreign/euro guys always seemed like an unnecessary risk when you could have made a run at established college basketball players with a much clearer path to eligibility.

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The 5 for 5 deal didn't come to light until later in the year, right?