LSU Tigers men’s basketball coach Will Wade is not interested in answering questions from Sports Illustrated senior writer Pat Forde, and he made that very apparent during a Zoom call on Tuesday.
Wade was participating in SEC Media Day virtually ahead of the upcoming hoops season after LSU’s flight to Birmingham from Baton Rouge was cancelled due to weather. The Tigers have had an interesting offseason on the hardwood to say the least. Up until last week, LSU had only four players listed on its official men’s basketball roster while at least five prospective players awaited eligibility clearances from the NCAA. On Oct. 8, the Tigers added six players to their roster, but the handful of players still awaiting eligibility rulings were still absent.
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So, Forde did what any reasonable reporter would do. He asked Wade about a few players who weren’t yet listed on LSU’s roster.
“I’m curious where things stand with [Marcio] Santos and Saliou Niang and Levy Gilad,” Forde said before being “aggressively interrupted” by Wade, according to Glenn Guilbeau of the LSU sports website Tiger Rag.
“Pat, do you follow us at all? Because Santos hadn’t been a member of our stuff since July,” Wade reportedly said, “So, I don’t know where the hell you got that from.”
Santos had actually been tied to LSU as late as Sept. 23, the day a reporter asked Wade about Santos at a press conference. Wade then revealed Santos was not with the team, and when asked why, Wade replied, “You’d have to ask the NCAA on that.”
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In other words, it was reasonable for a reporter to want a bit more detail about Santos’ status. But Wade was not having it with Forde.
“Do you even follow us? Or are you just here to ask ‘Gotcha’ questions?” Wade continued, cutting off Forde again when he tried to reply. “Santos hadn’t even been in the equation. We haven’t announced him as signed.”
“Okay, okay,” Forde said.
“We haven’t done any of that. What are we doing?” Wade said.
“How about the others?” Forde asked, referring to the other players he mentioned that still have eligibility questions going into the season. Wade, however, was not done.
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“You don’t follow us. You’re here to ask ‘Gotcha’ questions, but go ahead with what else you got,” the LSU coach said.
“I just did,” Forde replied. “Niang, Skyy Clark and Levy Gilad.”
“That’s who you got?” Wade asked, to which Forde replied, “Yep.”
“We’ll see who gets eligible,” Wade finally answered. “We feel good about that group getting eligible – the ones that were actually on our roster, the ones that were actually on our team, we feel like those guys will get eligible. How about that?”
The bad blood between the two men likely dates back to 2019, when Forde, along with Pete Thamel and Dan Wetzel, first broke the story of Will Wade discussing a “strong ass offer” made to a recruit while on an FBI wiretap. While that conduct seems quaint in the NIL era, it was a major rules violation at the time, and thus of great interest to reporters like Forde, particularly because of the FBI component.
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It appears as if Wade has held that grudge against Forde for seven years.
Meanwhile, LSU was picked 14th out of 16 by the press at SEC Media Day. For Wade’s sake, he better hope some of those players in question become eligible.
The post Will Wade erupts on Pat Forde over roster questions during SEC Media Day call appeared first on Awful Announcing.
