A tense Will Wade watched on from the sidelines.
After battling back multiple times, LSU had built a three-point lead in the final seconds and just needed one more stop to achieve its first win over Alabama in five matchups. Jaden Shackelford’s desperation heave fell short and the Tigers celebrated, breaking a five-game losing streak against the Crimson Tide and capping off an impressive regular season with a big win. What many fans and people around the LSU basketball program didn’t know, however, was that would be the last time they would see their general, Coach Wade, on the sidelines in the PMAC.
Just three days later LSU received its official Notice of Allegations from the NCAA’s Independent Accountability Resolution Process which cited Wade for five Level I violations. Action did not come immediately from LSU, as Wade held a press conference mere hours before Pat Forde and Sports Illustrated dropped the report of LSU receiving the allegations.
Wade went on to coach LSU in the SEC Tournament against Missouri and Arkansas later in the week in Tampa, Florida. But just 22 hours after Wade’s Tigers were eliminated by the Razorbacks, LSU President William Tate IV and Athletic Director Scott Woodward announced, in a letter, LSU terminated Coach Wade with cause and Associate Head Coach Bill Armstrong was also terminated, a day before an LSU team led by transfer portal success was to receive its seeding heading into the NCAA Tournament.
“We can no longer subject our University, Department of Athletics, and—most importantly—our student-athletes, to this taxing and already-lengthy process without taking action. Our responsibility to protect and promote the integrity and well-being of our entire institution and our student-athletes will always be paramount,” said Tate and Woodward On Sunday.
The Wade era at LSU will forever be one marred by scandal and filled with what-ifs.
Despite all the off-court drama that came during Wade’s time, it was also clear that he had delivered the program to a place it hadn’t experienced in the large part of a decade.
When Wade released the reins of his VCU team and headed south to Baton Rouge in 2017, the program, under Johnny Jones, was coming off its worst season in 20 years, having gone 10-21 and winning just two conference games.
In Wade’s first season at his new home, he almost completely rebuilt the roster, leading the Tigers to an 18-15 season and a return to the postseason in the National Invitational Tournament (NIT).
After an NIT win against Louisiana-Lafayette a passionate Wade let out an energetic; “We’re not scared of anyone”, which was the first major step to winning over a lifeless fanbase and Wade and the program’s momentum continued to roll.
Then tragedy struck.
On September 28, 2018, then LSU forward Wayde Sims was tragically shot and killed after an altercation at a party. The news was devastating for both the program and the entire Baton Rouge community, losing one of its own.
Sims, a University Lab School graduate, was preparing to enter his junior season at LSU and embodied the spirit and attitude that Wade looked for in his team.
“Everybody on the team loved him,” Wade said of Sims at an ensuing press conference. “He was the team jokester, the team prankster. He always had a smile and was bopping around. He got us going in practice.”
The response that came from LSU on the court was poetic: A star-studded recruiting class including Naz Reid, Javonte Smart and Darius Days helped lead LSU to its first outright SEC Championship in 10 years, raising the stock of LSU men’s basketball to a foreign height it had not seen in some time.
But as soon as the success found Wade in Baton Rouge, so would a four-year saga that now has LSU men’s basketball in one of the most precarious positions it has ever been in.
On March 8, 2019, Wade was suspended by then LSU Athletic Director Joe Alleva and President F. King Alexander, after an FBI wiretap was released, in which Wade while recruiting in 2017 was heard conspiring with an aspiring sports agent Christian Dawkins about a potential “strong ass offer” for then LSU recruit Javonte Smart.
“Dude, I went to him with a [expletive] strong-ass offer about a month ago. [Expletive] strong.”
“The problem was, I know why he didn’t take it now, it was [expletive] tilted toward the family a little bit. It was tilted toward taking care of the mom, taking care of the kid. Like it was tilted towards that. Now I know for a fact he didn’t explain everything to the mom. I know now, he didn’t get enough of the piece of the pie in the deal.”
This was the height of a federal investigation into bribery and corruption in college basketball that resulted in the convictions of Dawkins, Adidas executive James Gatto and consultant Merl Code; along with the arrests of 10 Division I assistant coaches.
Wade’s suspension would last through the rest of the 2018-2019 season which ended with LSU losing in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals, but reaching the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament, before falling to Michigan State who would advance all the way to the Final Four. Wade was reinstated as head coach on April 14, 2019, despite there being plenty of outside noise surrounding the program, it was clear the foundation had been set.
This was LSU’s first NCAA Tournament appearance in four years and first Sweet 16 appearance in 13 years. It was also LSU’s highest win total since the 1999-2000 season and there was a palpable buzz back in Baton Rouge surrounding men’s basketball. The momentum continued into the next season with LSU’s first big win coming far before the season started with the signing of five-star forward Trendon Watford out of Birmingham, Alabama.
This came as a shock to many with LSU entrenched in a recruiting scandal, but it served as further proof of Wade’s ability and work ethic on the recruiting trail. Wade and LSU beat out all other suitors in Alabama, Auburn and Memphis for Watford’s signature— an achievement that shocked many given the state of LSU’s men’s basketball program just a few years prior.
The outside noise continued to follow the Tigers throughout the regular season but once again Wade’s message of blocking out the noise worked; leading LSU to a 21-10 record and tied for second in the SEC. This time though, an unprecedented disruption happened: The COVID-19 Pandemic struck right as the SEC Tournament was getting started, canceling the remainder of the postseason.
In the ensuing offseason, HBO released a documentary titled “The Scheme,” which took an in-depth look at the federal investigation into college basketball from the perspective of agent and centerpiece of the investigation Christian Dawkins. In that documentary, the public was able to hear Wade’s conversation with Dawkins for the first time. This caused the outside noise around the program to pick up once again going into the 2020-2021 season.
Wade brought in another impressive recruiting class headlined by five-star guard Cameron Thomas, who would go on to be one of the top scorers in college basketball and a first round pick in the 2021 NBA Draft. The 2020-2021 season was another relatively successful one for LSU, finishing 16-8 in the regular season and securing third place in the SEC. In his fourth season, due to a suspension and a pandemic, Wade would make his first NCAA Tournament appearance as the head coach of LSU.
The Tigers would advance to the second round of the tournament before losing to Michigan, but now, four years into Wade’s tenure, the LSU men’s basketball program had gone through a full transformation, leading the SEC in regular season wins from 2019-2021.
Heading into the 2021-2022 season, it seemed like the noise had started to quiet down, or at least compared to what Wade and the Tigers were accustomed to. Adversity would once again strike though, as expected starter and star transfer Adam Miller suffered a torn ACL just weeks before the start of the season. A slight dip in overall success would follow for the Tigers this season, but another 20-win season and NCAA Tournament bid once again showed Wade and his group’s ability to win and fight through adversity.
“We were predicted to finish sixth in the SEC with him, we finished fifth without him so give credit to these guys,” Wade said of his team’s performance after Miller went down.
An adversity filled regular season will be followed by an even more adversity filled postseason. On the eve of Selection Sunday, Wade’s termination was announced, leaving the team without an official head coach and leader going into the most crucial part of the season.
Kevin Nickelberry will take over as the interim head coach, but one can only imagine the feelings and attitude of the players going into a situation like this. Nickelberry has over a decade of Division I head coaching experience, with stops at Howard and Hampton and has spent three seasons on LSU’s staff.
The next few weeks aside, LSU’s athletic department now heads into a long period of uncertainty. The Notice of Allegations included three total violations within the football program including a Level I, Level II and Level III. This cites LSU with eight Level I violations in total, causing the NCAA to cite LSU with Lack of Institutional Control.
This is a penalty schools try to avoid at all costs and can result in the vacation of wins, scholarship reductions, probation, postseason bans among other penalties. With this uncertainty present, hiring a new coach is no easy task and one that Scott Woodward will be faced with, freshly coming off another major coaching search in football.
When LSU takes the floor in the NCAA Tournament next week, Wade’s abilities as a coach and recruiter will be on display for likely one last time, despite him not being on the sidelines to lead them. What Wade did for basketball at LSU and in Baton Rouge is hard to measure, but over the next few months and years, time will also tell what kind of damage will be left.
