For all intents and purposes, he should be the villain.
In a vacuum, Will Wade, the dapper and debonair 38-year-old LSU coach, would be an easy figure for fans of the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team to root against, the subject of their social media-driven scorn.
Wade, for those who might have forgotten, was the VCU coach when Bona was robbed of a last-second win over the Rams on that fateful February day in 2017.
After the final buzzer had sounded following Matt Mobley’s would-be game-winning 3-pointer, it was Wade who beckoned officials to call the administrative technical foul on the students for rushing the floor early (though time had expired), allowing VCU to make the tying free throws and to win it in the extra session.
Wade, then in his first year at LSU, was also one of the central figures in the FBI’s 2017 college basketball corruption investigation, which implicated dozens of high-major programs and led to a number of allegations, many of which are still being sorted today.
Wade, infamously, was caught on an FBI wiretap admitting to making a “strong-(expletive) offer,” to a recruit. He was suspended in 2019, but retained his position 37 days later, and somehow still remains as the LSU boss despite clearly flouting NCAA rules by talking about the financial payment he was willing to make to a star player.
YES, the Nashville native has developed the stigmatic reputation as being a “sleazy” recruiter. He had a hand in costing Bona its biggest win four years ago and has become a poster boy for just how backwards the NCAA can be, continuing to coach at his impregnable Power 5 program and earning his $2.5 million per year despite damning evidence of cheating while plenty of the little guys suffer far greater consequences for much smaller offenses every year.
That’s why it would be understandable if Wade was made out to be the bad guy when Bona meets LSU in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
But then you hear, and remember, the way the Tigers coach talks about Bona and it hits you: Maybe this guy isn’t so bad, after all.
Wade, remember, was one of the first coaches to speak out on Bona’s behalf when coach Mark Schmidt’s team was left out of the 2016 NCAA Tournament, making an impassioned speech about just how stacked the deck is against quality mid-major conferences such as the Atlantic 10 and using Bona as an example of the need for change.
And he was extremely complimentary — and more knowledgeable than one might think, given the two had hardly crossed paths this winter — of the team, and coach, LSU will see on Saturday.
“I’VE ACTUALLY watched St. Bonaventure play a couple times this year,” he said in his post-NCAA selection press conference on Sunday. “They’ve got a top 40 offense, a top 20 defense. They’re 17th in the country in defensive efficiency and defense. They’ve got some good guard play, they’ve got a shot-blocker — a big 6-10 kid down there — a good small-ball ‘4,’ a good shooting guard, a good point guard in (Kyle Lofton).
“They’ve got a good team. Coach Schmidt, I’m familiar with him from the Atlantic 10. He’s as good a ball coach as there is out there in the country, so it’ll be a big, big challenge for us. But we’re excited.”
He was later asked about this small school in Western New York, of which the Baton Rouge-based media, of course, knew nothing, but understood that Wade was at least somewhat intimately aware.
The fourth-year LSU coach then launched into one of his wholehearted soliloquies, in which his praise for Bona seemed genuine and his admiration for the area sincere.
“It’s a great place, man,” he began. “Olean, New York, (there’s) not a lot of people; a bucket list (place), but I’m telling you, their fan support, their gym, it’s electric in there. It’s a really, really small Catholic school; I think they’ve got like 1,500 students, but Mark Schmidt has done a phenomenal, phenomenal job there. They are really, really god. The RC up there, it’s rocking, the students are on top of you, it’s a hell of a venue now.
“They have great teams, they’ve had great teams, they were always at the top of the Atlantic 10, and it’s a shame with not having fans (this year). If they had played the A-10 championship with VCU and Bona, they could have sold out most arenas — the Barclays Center, Dayton. Both have very passionate fan bases. It’s a unique school.”
He then finished his assessment with a humorous tidbit involving the Bartlett Country Club.
“When you go there, there’s actually no full service hotel,” he pointed out. “Coach Schmidt’s actually a member of the Olean country club, so you actually can eat a meal there, you just kinda have to drop his name to go in there and eat the meal, but we ate our last meal when I was at VCU at the country club.
“It’s a unique place and I have a lot of respect for just how good they are. They are ferocious competitors, they’re going to be unbelievably well-prepared, they’re staff has great continuity and they’re a tremendous, tremendous basketball program.”
And that, at least for this weekend, is what Wade figures to be: the would-be villain who’s difficult not to like.
(J.P. Butler, Bradford Publishing Company group sports editor, can be reached at jbutler@oleantimesherald.com)
