A little less than two years ago, Will Wade stood in front of a podium addressing the LSU faithful for the first time. His energy reverberated through the room and it was matched by a crowd starved for a consistent winner.
“As you go through coaching you’re always looking for spots,” said Wade said at his introductory press conference. “You go, ‘Man, why hasn’t it been able to be done consistently there? Why are things the way they are?
“Long ago, I identified LSU as somewhere that was an absolute sleeping giant.”
That day, he preached unrelenting aggression and refused to believe in waiting for something good to happen. For Wade, winners make things happen and seize every opportunity. His approach drew the ire of the NCAA and other college coaches, but it hasn’t slowed down LSU or Wade, who at 36 has compiled a 133-65 record and a soon third NCAA tournament appearance in six years as a head coach.
In two years, LSU transformed from a beaten down group coming off its worse season ever to a team that is poised to win the Southeastern Conference and make a run into the NCAA tournament as a top-four seed.
The Tigers dominated of late, winning 17 of its last 19 games, including two wins over top-5 teams, and sit at 24-5 atop the SEC. Wade’s group is one win away and a Tennessee loss from winning the SEC outright for the first time since 2009.
The team’s success hasn’t come out of nowhere, however. Wade and his staff made sure they got the right recruits to build a consistent winner. It started with star point guard Tremont Waters, who signed with Georgetown but was released from his letter of intent when a coaching change took place.
Waters was one of the most highly sought after players in the summer of 2017, and Wade went out and brought him to Baton Rouge all the way from New Haven, Connecticut, to be the first major piece of the new look Tigers.
Waters arrival at LSU showed Wade wasn’t comfortable taking his time to rebuild.
There was going to be no rebuild — LSU was going to win, and they were going to do it soon.
Then Wade went to the Northwest and found Oregon transfer Kavell Bigby-Williams that same summer, but he had to sit out a year due to transfer rules. So instead, LSU made due with only two true big men on the team and relied on a feisty, small-ball lineup that led to an 18-15 record and an NIT appearance.
While pleased with the progress in the first year, Wade knew the NIT was a stepping stone not a landing spot — he wanted more.
First, he signed the face of Louisiana basketball in Javonte Smart, a three-time state champion from Scotlandville High School in north Baton Rouge. Smart parlayed his relationship with top-15 national recruit Naz Reid, a 6-foot-10 power forward who became LSU’s highest-rated signee since Ben Simmons in 2015.
Add in junior college transfer Marlon Taylor and two more top recruits like Darius Days and Emmitt Williams, and the result is a top-5 recruiting class ranked next to the likes of Duke, Kansas and North Carolina.
“When you have a special group, everything just comes together in the right way,” Wade said. “You can always have talent, but when the talent gets along like our guys do – you never know exactly how all the stuff is going to go.
“In recruiting, you think you fit the right personalities, but sometimes you hit on it, sometimes you don’t. We obviously hit on it, and its propelled us to a solid season so far.”
And while the expectations were high for LSU, they weren’t this high.
The Tigers were picked to finish sixth in the SEC and were often projected as a mid-seeded team in the NCAA tournament. Wade aimed higher, however, and he viewed LSU’s current situation as realistic.
“I thought we were really good from the beginning,” Wade said. “We obviously hit some bumps in the road and we didn’t go as quickly as we thought we’d go, but I thought we were very, very good.
“I wasn’t very bashful about that earlier on in the year. I knew we were going to be good.”
Wade speaks of the bumps such as losses to ranked opponents like Florida State and Houston – two games where LSU held double-digit leads in the second half – and a blowout loss to Oklahoma State. Though he does believe those early missteps led the Tigers to where they are now, the process paid off.
Yet, some nationally still don’t believe in LSU, and it was even hard for Smart to picture all this happening.
“It’s half-and-half,” Smart said. “Somehow I expected us to do big things, but somehow I didn’t. I’m just happy were in this position.”
Even Reid is somewhat surprised by what they have accomplished, although he believes LSU is right where they are supposed to be and the sixth place projection was “a reach.”
And LSU is right where Will Wade wants them to be.
Awake.
