Will Wade ignores firestorm as he again takes over as LSU men's basketball coach
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Will Wade doesn’t ignore the firestorm that has followed him for almost a decade since the previous time he was LSU’s men’s basketball coach. “We’re coming back to try to hang a banner, win a national championship, or I’m going to be the first coach fired from the same school twice,” Wade said at his introductory news conference Monday as he officially became the first SEC men’s head basketball coach in history to be fired and re-hired by the same school.
“One way or another, we’re going to make history. ” In his first LSU stint from 2017-22, Wade was 105-51 with an SEC regular-season championship and three NCAA tournament appearances. LSU fired him in March 2022 for his involvement in NCAA Level I and Level II recruiting violations.
After sitting out a season, followed by two years as head coach for McNeese State and N. C. State this past season, he’s back at LSU.
The Tigers fired Matt McMahon, Wade’s predecessor, after he went 60-70 overall and 17-55 in the SEC in four seasons. Immediately, former McNeese president and now-LSU president Wade Rousse began pursuing Wade. He won two Southland Conference championships and went 1-2 in the NCAA tournament with the Lake Charles, La.
-based school. “At LSU, we do not gather to celebrate mediocrity,” Rousse said. “We do not aim to simply be competitive.