To say that the last few months for LSU’s basketball program has been tumultuous might be an understatement.
It felt like every single day since the university suspended head coach Will Wade indefinitely that more news started to come out about him and his alleged recruiting tactics. The Tigers head coach spoke with the media for the first time since being reinstated on Tuesday in Destin, Florida where a lot of the higher-ups in the Southeastern Conference are meeting for their spring meetings and was apologetic about a lot of things, but most importantly, he wants to start rebuilding trust with LSU as well the SEC.
“As the leader of the basketball program, I’m here today to start the process of rebuilding trust.” Will Wade said on Tuesday, “I think certainly as I’ve had time to reflect since I was out for 40 days or so, there were some mistakes that I made. But ever since that, when I was able to sit down and talk with LSU and meet with LSU and meet with the NCAA, I was fully cooperative. I disclosed everything and answered any and all questions completely and fully with LSU and with the NCAA.”
While Wade didn’t go in-depth on some of the allegations that were thrown his way from media reports due to the confidentiality of the meeting between himself, LSU and the NCAA, he did discuss briefly about what was said during the Christian Dawkins trial and said that it was “absolutely false and did not happen”. The tone of that press conference felt a lot like someone atoning for their mistakes and had a tinge of regret, namely his actions prior to the end of the regular season when he didn’t meet with the university after all the allegations that seemingly pinned Wade into a corner.
“Certainly as I look back, that Friday where we were going to meet with the administration, I think I made a poor decision in how I handled that.” Wade mentioned, “If I could go back and do it again, I would have taken the meeting and been a little more forceful in getting that meeting. Because what happened after that, any time you get lawyers involved in things, things get drawn out.”
He also mentioned something that many have noticed since his arrival at LSU and that was his brashness both on and off the court and said that “rubbed some folks the wrong way and that’s my fault.” With that in mind, he mentioned that he will still recruit aggressively but will try to toe the proverbial line.
One of the big reasons he regrets the way he handled the situation was how it put a black cloud on his team’s journey in the NCAA Tournament.
I was very proud of our guys. They were resilient all year.” Wade said, “We’d had quite a few things, if you followed us, happen all season that were very very tough to deal with. I was just very proud of our guys and pleased with how they responded. I was proud of my coaching staff and how they held everything together, which was not an easy feat and not easy to do, but it was difficult, but like I said with Ron’s question, I put myself in that situation. You’ve got to understand that. I put myself in that situation so you’ve got to live with it.
“It was what you would think. I was yelling at the TV. Didn’t throw my remote, but it was certainly very very end of the games and into it to try and help our guys and see our guys advance. I was disappointed too because of my situation, it took away from some of the great things our team did, some of the great players we had. The story was more about me sometimes than it was about our players. We have phenomenal players and we have phenomenal student-athletes so that was very difficult.”
With all that behind him, Wade now wants to focus on being LSU’s head coach and start building a certain level of trust with the new Athletic Director in Scott Woodward. The amendments to his contract that were announced on April 24th may have been the first step towards getting into that circle of trust with Woodward.
-Clint Domingue