GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
It’s good to dream.
And many LSU basketball fans, including one or two LSU Board of Supervisors members, and a few media members with still-heavy man crushes on former coach Will Wade were fervently hoping, and in some cases, feverishly working to try to get Wade back at LSU in recent months, weeks and even days.
“That’s never going to happen as long as Scott Woodward is athletic director,” an LSU insider told Tiger Rag on Wednesday.
And if there was one afoot, there will no longer be any concerted effort, including by a certain political power or two, to try to pressure Woodward into hiring Wade back. It was Woodward who rightly fired Wade in March of 2022 amid a plethora of major NCAA violations while LSU’s coach from 2017-22.
Such a Wade coup wasn’t going to happen without a fight, and Woodward is more connected politically than any LSU athletic director in history and as connected as some in Louisiana politics now. He used to play that game in Baton Rouge before he went the athletic director route.
It’s not happening. Wade’s not coming back to LSU ever, unless it’s for a future NIT game or SEC-ACC series. Sorry folks. Matt McMahon will remain LSU’s coach for at least one more season.
Because as of Wednesday, Wade will be the new coach at North Carolina State in Raleigh, once he finishes coaching No. 12 seed McNeese State in the NCAA Tournament, according to multiple reports on Wednesday afternoon, including by the Raleigh News & Observer newspaper.
Wade and McNeese (27-6, 19-1 Southland Conference regular season and tournament champions) play No. 5 seed Clemson (27-6, 18-2 ACC) at 2:15 p.m. Thursday on TruTV in Providence, Rhode Island.
And good luck to him. Wade admitted his voluminous mistakes at LSU somewhat in his first season at McNeese State last season when he also won the Southland regular season and tournament and reached the NCAA Tournament.
He may have enjoyed a redemption rollover as LSU’s coach, but that would have soon worn off, and he just landed a better job anyway. The Wolfpack just reached the Final Four last year, and he will inherit a much better roster and much more lucrative NIL war chest in true basketball country. Any revenge he may want would be better served coaching a cold win over LSU in the NCAA Tournament some day.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, like Woodward, would have done everything in his power to keep the outlaw Wade out of LSU and the SEC.
And even though the SEC was historically great this season, men’s basketball at N.C. State is second to nothing, as opposed to LSU, where it is a solid fifth behind football, baseball, women’s basketball and gymnastics. Wade could make LSU men’s basketball third again and No. 1 for a few weeks each March and maybe early April, but that’s probably about it.
There’s nothing quite like college basketball on Tobacco Road, and Wade knows the terrain, having coached not far from it at Clemson as a graduate assistant from 2005-07, as a Virginia Commonwealth assistant from 2009-13 and as VCU’s head coach from 2015-17 with two NCAA Tournament berths, including a No. 10 seed upset of No. 7 seed Oregon State in the first round in 2016.
Wade also led LSU to three NCAA Tournaments, though he only coached in one of them in 2021. LSU suspended him before the 2019 NCAA Tournament shortly after news broke about an FBI wiretap that featured him discussing a “strong-ass offer” he made previously to LSU star guard Javonte Smart when he was in high school near Baton Rouge. That opened the floodgates of an NCAA investigation.
And that got him fired on March 12, 2022, just four days after the feared NCAA Notice of Allegations letter and six days before before another NCAA Tournament. He resurfaced at McNeese before the 2023-24 season with some large NCAA baggage.
LSU fans who ridiculously and incorrectly say, “Everything Wade did at LSU is legal now with NIL,” need to remember that the reason Wade was never going to be re-hired at LSU – if he ever was interested in a return – was the NCAA’s final ruling on him and his program three years ago at this time.
The NCAA found LSU guilty of eight of the most serious Level 1 violations, including five directly involving Wade, whom the NCAA found even used his wife’s bank account to pay a recruit money.
“Wade obstructed the NCAA’s investigation by concealing evidence and lying to NCAA officials in interviews,” according to the NCAA, which charged him with “unethical conduct.”
GLENN GUILBEAU: NCAA BAD BOY WILL WADE IN DETAIL
Wade’s “cheating was planned, schemed and purposeful,” the NCAA said. “Wade’s conduct was deliberate and committed after substantial planning. Specifically, Wade offered inducements to secure prospective student athletes.”
The way Wade cheated at LSU would land him on probation even with NIL. Plus he had an advantage then that he doesn’t have now. Yes, many others were paying players against the rules pre-NIL, but not quite like Willy the Kid Wade.
But this is America. And this March Madness. And Wade’s back at the Dance again with McNeese and soon to be back in the big time again.
“It was probably very good for me,” Wade said last year of the NCAA ruling. “I probably needed to be checked a little.”
A little? Ya think?
“It gave me perspective on some things that I’d maybe lost some perspective on,” he said. “My career needs a rebirth after everything that’s gone on, you know. Let’s be honest, right?”
Wade, at least, is honest. You can’t get more honest than “strong-ass” offer. And Wade couldn’t have been more honest when asked about the North Carolina State job on Wednesday at an NCAA Tournament press conference in Providence, R.I., shortly before the story broke that he was indeed going to North Carolina State.
“How do you address, if you do, some of the chatter about your future with the program with your players to keep them in the moment?,” a reporter asked Wade.
“We addressed it head on,” he said. “I talked to them Saturday about it. ‘Here’s what it is, here is where we are.’ It was just me and our players, and we all talked about it. I’m aware of what I have got going on. They’re aware of what we’ve got going on. You just hit it head-on. We’re all on the same page with everything.”
That might be the best answer in the history of sport by a coach who is about to leave for another coaching job. In other words, Wade just blew away Nick Saban’s ridiculous answer in 2006 to a question about him leaving the Miami Dolphins for Alabama and Jim Harbaugh’s silly diatribes as he was preparing to leave Michigan after the 2023-24 national championship game for the NFL.
Congrats, Will Wade.
A more direct question followed.
“Rumors linking you to North Carolina State, specifically, have you, your agent, anyone close to you, spoken to North Carolina State?”
“Yes,” Wade said.
Wow. Thank you again.
None of this, “I’m the coach at McNeese now” BS.
Another question asked Wade to explain this historically refreshing approach.
“Just tell it like it is,” he said. “You may not always like what I’m going to say, but I’m going to tell you what I think. I’ve always kind of been like that, and there’s no need to hide it. The guys are reading it on social media. It’s no secret. I’m not going to ask them to do something I’m not willing to do. It’s no good if you don’t address it, and if you sit there and BS them. They can read right through the BS, so you might as well say, ‘Hey, this is what it is. Here we are, and we’ll figure it out.'”
That’s a strong-ass philosophy. Major college sports needs the reformed Will Wade. We’ll see if he can succeed in a major conference on a level playing field against coaches and coffers far advanced from the Southland without the wholesale illegal advantages he created at LSU.
We’ll also see if Matt McMahon can succeed once his NIL chest is level with the rest of the SEC.
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