LSU's Will Wade uses Airbnb, Uber to explain his 'unconventional' roster-building strategy

LSU Tigers head basketball coach Will Wade believes his program can change the market.

Whether or not he succeeds in doing that is an open question as he heads into year one of his second stint with the team, but you've got to give him credit.

Much like his football counterpart, Lane Kiffin, Wade is evaluating where college athletics are right now and trying to do everything he can to give LSU an advantage.

The Tigers are just over a month from the start of the 2026-27 basketball season, and they've only got four players on their active roster.

Those players are guards Divine Ugochukwu, Austin Nunez and Abdi Bashir as well as forward Mouhamed Dioubate.

LSU can't even field a starting lineup right now, let alone a full team.

That's because Wade and the Tigers have several players waiting in the wings that they're hoping will be able to play if several legal eligibility fights against the NCAA go their way.

All those players want to be Tigers and Wade wants to roster them, but with just weeks left before the season, he's still not sure if he'll be able to. He doesn't want to go and fill those spots, though, just in case those eligibility cases go in LSU's favor. 

So for now, Wade and the Tigers wait in this dangerous game of limbo. He believes the payoff will be there, though.

"What we’re doing is unconventional; I understand that. I understand that," Wade recently told the media. "But, you know, 20 years ago Airbnb was unconventional. Everybody stayed in a hotel. Fifteen years ago you rode in a taxi everywhere. Now you take Uber. So just because it’s unconventional doesn’t mean it’s not going to work. Now it may not work. If it doesn’t work, write about what an idiot I am. I understand that.”

To Wade's point, it was once considered taboo to stay in a stranger's house or enter a random person's car for money. That's what hotels and taxis were for. 

Airbnb and Uber changed their respective industries, and Wade wants LSU to be at the forefront of college basketball in that same way.