Emily Staker provided legal insight to The Advocate in Baton Rouge News about legal cases regarding player eligibility on the LSU men’s basketball team.
Will LSU's overseas and fifth-year players stay eligible? See what two lawyers said on the topic
LSU basketball coach Will Wade assembled a roster with multiple players who weren’t guaranteed to be eligible entering 2026-27. Find out if his fifth-year transfers and international signees will remain cleared to play.
By Toyloy Brown
November 1, 2026
Will Wade admitted he took a “calculated risk” in crafting an LSU roster that currently has six players who weren’t guaranteed eligibility.
“I understand we went a little bit overboard, but everybody else has one or two of them,” Wade said at the Rotary Club of Baton Rouge on Oct. 7. “I figure if you're going to dive in, you might as well not dip your toe. Just dive head first and let's go.”
The risk mostly paid off as five of those six players have nothing preventing them from playing in the season opener against LSU New Orleans on Nov. 3. Gilad Levy, a 7-foot-3 center from Israel, is the only one remaining not cleared.
To better understand if those five players will remain eligible for the remainder of the season, The Advocate spoke to two lawyers. Attorney Emily Staker of Christine Brown and Partners answered questions related to the UCLA fifth-year transfer guards Donavan Dent and Skyy Clark.
Attorney Don Jackson, the principal of The Sports Group who has more than 30 years of experience in sports law, discussed the process of getting the three LSU overseas players he represented cleared to play college basketball. Those players are Croatian center Michael Ruzic, French center Brice Dessert and Italian-Senegalese wing Saliou Niang.
Jackson, who has a track record of helping international athletes gain eligibility, didn’t represent Levy.
Fifth-year transfers
Dent and Clark received court rulings that effectively extended their eligibility for the upcoming season through separate lawsuits in California and Kentucky, respectively.
But the NCAA has shown it will work to appeal every ruling that isn’t in its favor.
“They want power over college athletics,” Staker said of the NCAA. “They see that if they don't zealously pursue this and try and enforce their eligibility rules as aggressively as possible, there is a serious risk of schools, athletes getting the impression that if they don't like an NCAA rule, they can run to the court and have the court change it.”
This motivation is why Staker, a Washington state‑licensed attorney of seven years, expected the NCAA to move quickly to request a stay and appeal in these cases where fifth-year players gained eligibility.
On Friday, it tried to do that in Clark’s lawsuit, which granted a temporary injunction for a fifth season to more than 30 plaintiffs on Oct. 16.
The Kentucky Court of Appeals denied the NCAA’s request for an emergency stay that would’ve made Clark ineligible to play. Its hope for an appeal will continue before a three-judge panel.
Staker said nothing is stopping the NCAA from continuing to go through a similar attempt to stay and appeal Dent’s lawsuit and others across the country.
Wade is aware the eligibility status of his likely starting backcourt could fluctuate depending on a court decision, he said Thursday. He was asked whether there is a contingency plan if one or both miss time.
“We're all in at this point," Wade said. “We've been all in since the day school started, so I mean, there's no contingencies. We are what we are at this point. So look, we've got everybody eligible for now, and you know we'll certainly see how all that shakes out.”
International players
Wade saide the majority of his team is permanently eligible, including his three international commitments the NCAA cleared. Ruzic, 20, was granted eligibility three hours before the team’s first exhibition against McNeese State on Oct. 8. Niang, 22, and Dessert, 23, were cleared Oct. 20 and played in the Tigers' last exhibition against Florida State on Oct. 24.
Their lawyer doesn’t foresee the trio’s eligibility status changing.
“No, I couldn't imagine any circumstance where that occurred,” Jackson said.
International athletes have to be verified by the NCAA Eligibility Center, which determines whether a prospective athlete can play college sports in the U.S. The decision is primarily based on academic and amateurism certification, Jackson said.
Jackson has worked with many athletes who have gone through the process, including Turkish center Omer Yurtseven, who joined NC State in 2016, and Guinean forward Mamadi Diakite, who arrived at Virginia the same year and helped the Cavaliers win the national championship in the 2018-19 season.
Jackson also represented Nigerian center Charles Bassey, who played for current LSU associate head coach Rick Stansbury at Western Kentucky beginning in 2018.
Part of the challenge in getting the LSU players cleared stemmed from inconsistencies in the NCAA Eligibility Center’s cost-benefit analysis on athletes.
“The whole interpretive process has changed in effect three times during this one certification cycle,” Jackson said.
He said that the amount of money an international player made playing professionally has been a factor in the NCAA’s process of deeming amateurism. Jackson said players can retain their amateur status as long as the compensation they receive “balances out” their actual expenses. Those necessary expenses can include training costs and out-of-pocket medical expenses.
Levy is the only LSU player on the roster unable to play in the opener. Wade explained why he expects the 24-year-old to be cleared.
“He was in the military, so there's a military exemption,” Wade said. “What he looks like on paper, you can subtract three years from that in terms of eligibility is concerned. We've turned in the last of his stuff. I anticipate he'll be fine.
