What Will Wade Is Accomplishing At McNeese Is Absurd, And The Numbers Prove It
Many college basketball fans hear the name Will Wade and immediately think ‘FBI wiretap.' Well, that, or they think of the phrase ‘strong-ass offer,’ which, based on transcription, was what he said on said wiretap while reportedly offering a recruit during his time as the head coach at LSU.
Wade was eventually fired by LSU in March 2022 following the NCAA investigation and recruiting scandal, and while we're three years removed, it's still fresh enough that the college basketball world hasn't entirely moved past it.
You couple that with the fact that Wade jumped back into the coaching world in 2023 by taking the head gig at McNeese, a school plenty of folks have never even heard of, and you don't exactly have the recipe for the most attractive story.
Prior to landing in Lake Charles, Louisiana with McNeese, Wade won basketball games, a lot of basketball games.
Will Wade has accomplished a ton in just two years at McNeese. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
In his first head coaching job at Chattanooga, Wade went 40-25 during his two seasons. He then made the jump to VCU, where he served as an assistant under Shaka Smart, and went 51-20 with a win in the NCAA Tournament. In five seasons at LSU, he went 105-51 and coached the Tigers to the Sweet Sixteen in 2019.
An overall coaching record of 196-96 speaks for itself, but winning basketball games at VCU and LSU isn't quite the same challenge as winning games at McNeese with the NIL bizarro world in full order.
Last year, his first season at McNeese, Wade led the Cowboys to a 30-4 record and a trip to the NCAA Tournament. This season, the Cowboys are 23-6 and head into their conference tournament as the overwhelming favorites to win it for a second straight year.
Prior to Wade's arrival, McNeese had put together just three 20-win seasons since the turn of the century. The Cowboys had won 56 games in the previous five seasons combined before Wade took over the program, and he's already won 53 in less than two seasons' time.
This year's McNeese team does not have a marquee win that jumps off the page, but it did give Alabama all it wanted early in the year in an eight-point loss and then nearly stole one against Mississippi State before losing 66-63.
McNeese having a NET ranking of 61 playing in the Southland Conference speaks volumes of the program's winning and dominant ways. There isn't another team in the conference that ranks inside the Top 165 in the NET rankings.
The Cowboys will still need to win their conference tournament to punch their ticket to The Big Dance, and if they do, there probably isn't a team in the country that wants to draw them in a first-round matchup.