LSU women’s, men’s basketball teams make their big debuts | LSU

Welcome to what may be the most anticipated week of the entire sports year at LSU.

It ends Saturday with a football showdown against Alabama in Tiger Stadium. But even what amounts to a play-in game for the College Football Playoff must take a temporary backseat to what awaits inside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

LSU basketball is back, and the excitement is like something rarely seen in this football-made town.

It starts at 6 p.m. Monday night when the No. 9-ranked LSU women open against SLU. The hoops doubleheader reaches a crescendo when the LSU men host LSUNO at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

It’s a new day for LSUNO athletics. The artist formerly known only as the University of New Orleans reverting to its original name for the first time since 1974.

It’s a new day for LSU men’s basketball as well, with the dawn of the Will Wade era 2.0.

In a move as only LSU could make it, the school has brought back a coach as popular as he is polarizing after firing him for NCAA infractions in 2022.

Wade never stopped loving LSU, though, and vice versa. If loving Wade is wrong, the folks at LSU figured, they don’t want to be right.

“We’re coming back to make history,” Wade said in March at his introductory news conference. “We’re coming back to try to hang a banner, win a national championship or I’m going to be the first coach fired from the same school twice.”

To do the former, Wade will have to exceed anything he did in his first stay at LSU — he got the 2018-19 Tigers to the SEC regular-season championship and the NCAA Sweet 16 while he was suspended from coaching — and anything the LSU men have done for a long time. The Tigers haven’t been to the NCAA tournament since Wade was fired in 2022 — the best former coach Matt McMahon could do during his four-year stint at the PMAC was get the Tigers into the NIT in 2024 as a 17-16 team.

Wade is already building big for the future: the Tigers have four prospects lined up for next season’s recruiting class that is ranked No. 1 nationally.

But what of this year? There is literally no one left from McMahon’s last squad. What’s here now is a 14-man collection of players from literally all over the globe. If you want a star, look to either former UCLA point guard Donovan Dent or 6-foot-8 forward Saliou Niang, whose prior experience was in a pro league in Italy.

Don’t get me started on NCAA eligibility issues.

Little is expected nationally from this first Wade team. The Tigers were picked 14th in the preseason poll at last month’s SEC media days. But for now, for most LSU men’s basketball fans it’s enough that Wade is back. He is the show. And don’t be surprised if they surprise and make it back into the newly expanded NCAA tournament field of 76.

If Wade is the show with men’s basketball, Kim Mulkey’s team is back for another edition of showtime. The 2025-26 Tigers led the nation in scoring with 95 points per game and opened this past season with eight straight 100-plus point games, an NCAA record.

Compared to the LSU men, you know a lot of what you’re getting with the women’s team. Despite losing stars like Flau’jae Johnson from last year’s Sweet 16 team, the Tigers have one of the most imposing backcourts in the country with All-American candidate Mikaylah Williams, disruptive ball-hawking guard MiLaysia Fulwiley and transfer point guard Jada Williams from Iowa State.

It’s in the post that LSU’s fate will be decided. As longtime LSU assistant Bob Starkey likes to say, “No rebounds, no rings.”

The Tigers famously lost 6-5 Ukranian Kate Koval (now at Baylor), bringing in 6-5 Russian Anna Minaeva. She’s got more upside than Koval, but at 17 definitely much less experience.

Experience will have to come from 6-3 former Spanish pro Noa Morrow, though she is out until at least later this month recovering from a leg fracture. In the meantime, 6-3 Grace Knox and 6-0 ZaKiyah Johnson will have to carry the load.

“We know what we lost,” said Mulkey, who hard to believe is entering her sixth season at LSU. “I know what we have in our returning players. They’re all very confident.”

Confidence will have to carry Mulkey’s Tigers against a souped-up non-conference schedule that includes UConn, Villanova, NC State and North Carolina. Then there are the regular-season matchups with No. 1 South Carolina, Texas and Vanderbilt, teams like LSU picked to finish among the top four in the SEC.

More will be expected of the women’s team, based on the track record under Mulkey that of course includes 2023’s NCAA championship. But the anticipation for men’s and women’s basketball has reached an equivalency not seen in a long time at LSU.

Can it all be sustained? They’re about to tip it off and we’re all about to find out.