Will Wade, McNeese have both gotten what they were looking for

NEW ORLEANS – McNeese needed Will Wade.

And Will Wade needed McNeese.

After less than a full season it’s clear that the Cowboys and their men’s basketball coach both got just what they were looking for. The school was looking to turn around its program and Wade was looking to turn around his career.

Southland Conference champion McNeese concluded its historic regular season with an 81-57 victory against UNO on Wednesday night in Lakefront Arena.

“It’s been a magical regular season,” Wade said afterward, “and now we’ve got to turn the page and get into post-season.”

The Cowboys (28-3, 17-1), who completed their first undefeated home regular season in 22 years with an 87-69 victory against HCU on Monday night, will host the Southland tournament beginning Sunday. Their victory over the Privateers (9-22, 4-14) enabled them to tie their school record for conference wins in a season.

Wade said that if he had been told before the season that those numbers would have been awaiting him in March, “I’d have signed up for it.”

“It doesn’t matter what conference you’re in,” he added, “to go 17-1 in conference is extremely, extremely difficult.”

McNeese clinched its first Southland title in 13 years with an 83-62 home victory against Nicholls last Saturday and along the way Wade confirmed his status as a very successful head coach in his return after being fired by LSU in 2022 because of NCAA recruiting violations

“McNeese needed to reboot the program; I needed to reboot my career,” Wade said. “That’s why it’s worked. A lot of our players needed this situation as well. They’ve been all over the place and they needed a place that they could call home – and a place that would embrace them and welcome them. McNeese has done that – for myself, my family and all of our payers.”

None of the Cowboys’ top nine players joined the program out of high school. They are from seven different states (but not Louisiana) and have arrived from colleges such as TCU, Tulsa, UTSA, UMass, CSU Bakersfield, Florida, Utah, South Carolina State and Clarendon College (Texas).

Wade and his staff have quickly molded them into a cohesive and mostly dominant unit.

McNeese entered Wednesday’s game with the second-most victories in the country by 10 or more points, then had its 21st such victory. For the 24th time this season it did not trail in the second half and its nation-leading scoring margin of 18.8 went up.

Wade and McNeese agreed last month to a five-year contract extension that will pay him at least $700,000 per year.

When the extension was announced athletic director Heath Schroyer said he had promised the new coach that he would “rip up” the original contract and give him a new one “when the program was turned around and flipped.”

The university understandably considers the program turned around.

“We have become nationally relevant in men’s basketball and the McNeese brand has become stronger and more recognizable regionally and nationally,” Schroyer said. “There is simply no price you can put on that type of brand recognition.”

Schroyer noted that Wade’s program already has generated “more than five times” the revenue that was produced last season when the Cowboys finished 11-23 and 6-12.

“We are simply reinvesting into this program,” Schroyer said, “which will in turn help our entire department.”

The new contract includes a buyout of $1.25 million if Wade takes another job before the end of August. A year later the buyout will be reduced to $1 million and to $500,000 a year after that.

McNeese is doing its best to hang on to its 41-year-old head coach for as long as it can. The coach undoubtedly will be courted by much bigger programs, presumably beginning as soon as this month, and it would be naïve to think Wade will be in Lake Charles long term.

There was never any doubt that Wade was a very good coach. He led Chattanooga to winning records in his first two seasons as a head coach, took VCU to the NCAA Tournament in both of his seasons there and guided LSU to three NCAA Tournaments in his five seasons.

But he was fired by LSU after the 2021-22 season when an NCAA investigation determined that Wade provided improper benefits to recruits.

The NCAA’s subsequent adoption of NIL, which allows college athletes to earn money from their name, image and likeness, has legalized the behavior that got Wade and LSU into trouble.

Schroyer said he and his search committee “did an extremely extreme amount of due diligence” before hiring Wade.

The university tried to mitigate potential NCAA sanctions by suspending Wade for the first five games of his tenure as part of his original contract. But the NCAA gave the coach a 10-game suspension and imposed recruiting restrictions through June of 2025.

While Wade was sidelined the Cowboys got off to an 8-2 start, which included a win at VCU, under assistants Brandon Chambers and Vernon Hamilton. McNeese has lost just once with Wade on the bench.

Wade has completed his sentence and now he has essentially an imprimatur from the NCAA. So he’s once again a good coach in good standing.

And his program at McNeese is in pretty good standing as well.