LSU player Sims shot to death during fight

BATON ROUGE , L A.» LSU basketball player Wayde Sims has died after he was shot during a fight involving several men early Friday near the campus of another university in his hometown of Baton Rouge.

Sims, 20, was shot around 12:25 a.m. and died from his wounds at a hospital, Baton Rouge police Sgt. Don Coppola Jr. said.

The shooting happened near Southern University’s A.W. Mumford Stadium, where homecoming festivities are taking place this weekend.

Police have begun circulating a video of a fight among several men in a street which they believe led to the shooting of Sims. Police did not identify Sims in the video, which also shows cars stopping to avoid the melee, but Coppola said po lice are primarily interested in identifying a man seen wearing red pants with a white stripe.

“Investigators are looking to identify that individual, along with any others in the video, to see if they have further information on who is responsible for taking the life of Sims,” Coppola said.

LSU basketball coach Will Wade, speaking alongside Athletic Director Joe Alleva at LSU’s Pete Maravich Assembly Center on Friday morning, said the team is “devastated” and “in shock.”

“This is your worst nightmare as a coach. This is what you worry about at all times,” said Wade, who informed the team of Sims’ death when they met for what was supposed to have been a 6:30 a.m. workout Friday. “There’s problems everywhere, so you just want to educate your guys as best as possible to stay away from those situations and unfortunately, sometimes, these lessons are the toughest.”

Wade described Sims as the “team jokester” who was always smiling and, as one of the few players with a car, would happily shepherd teammates around town on errands or to show off the city where he grew up.

“Everybody on the team loved him,” Wade said. “He got us going in practice. He would do anything for anybody on our team.”

Wayde’s father, Wayne, played for LSU under coach Dale Brown from 198791. One of Brown’s assistants at the time, Johnny Jones, was LSU’s head coach when the younger Sims graduated from University High and joined the Tigers. Wade took over after Jones was fired at the end of the 2017 sea son.

“It’s just so senseless and tragic,” Alleva said, calling Friday his saddest day in his fourplusdecade career in college sports. “Wayde grew up in Baton Rouge and knew a lot of people, not just on the basketball team. His footprint permeates the whole campus. It even goes down to UHigh. This is a terrible experience for everyone.”

Wade had praised Sims for his offseason work earlier this week in a radio broadcast.

“Maybe the guy I’ve been most impressed with is Wayde Sims,” Wade said on 104.5 FM ESPN’s “Off the Bench”. “Moving him around, we’re trying to solve the issue of having a bigger 3man, and really, the past month or couple of weeks we’ve messed around with him at the 3. He’s done a really nice job.”