PROVIDENCE, R.I. – McNeese President Wade Rousse sat down with Will Wade when he hired him as basketball coach and laid out a two-year plan: Make the NCAA Tournament in the first year, and win a game in the second.
After that, he figured, it might be tough to keep Wade around.
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And he’s been right on all counts.
“I may never make another plan,” Rousse said after the 12th-seeded Cowboys upset No. 5 seed Clemson 69-67 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Thursday. “Because that one turned out so well.”
Two years after taking over at the Southland Conference school in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in an attempt to revive his career, Wade is moving on to NC State. To Rousse, that was always the risk in taking on someone who was one of the best young coaches in the sport before his career was sidetracked by scandal.
“We’ve had a plan for two years, and we’ve been transparent with one another,” Rousse told The Associated Press in the hallways underneath the stands of the Amica Mutual Pavilion. “We needed Coach. We kind of figured this is where we’re going.”
The Cowboys used a stifling first half to hold Clemson to 13 points, opening a 24-point lead before holding off a late charge to earn the school’s first NCAA Tournament victory.
Now, the Wolfpack will have to wait until McNeese’s March Madness run is over.
And Wade and his players say they won't have any problem concentrating on the second-round game against Purdue in the meantime.
“Everybody is aware of everything that’s going on,” McNeese forward Christian Shumate said. “Everybody is transparent on both ends and that’s something we worry about later. We’re just focused on winning these games.”
Wade helped LSU make the NCAA Tournament twice in four years, but he was fired in 2021 after being accused of recruiting violations. He took a year off, and then signed on with the school just down Interstate 10.
“They have gone all-in on our program since the day we got there,” Wade said. “They thought we were a little wacky when we did it. But, hey, who’s laughing now?”
The success has revived Wade's career and set him up for a job in the higher-profile Atlantic Coast Conference. (Rousse said the school is “pretty far down the path” of replacing him.) But it's also buttressed the profile of the 6,000-student school about halfway between New Orleans and Houston.
Rousse said applications are up 10% for the fall, the yield of students accepting offers is up three years in a row, and the school’s website crashed at the final buzzer of Thursday’s game.
“I said, ‘I don’t need a coach. I need someone who understands what our vision is and what our mission is.' And Coach is all-in on that," he said.
“We have been in an enrollment decline for 14, 15 years. We turned it last year. A large part of that has been our strategic plan to elevate the athletic program, to drive our academic program."
Wade recited the same statistics during his postgame news conference, and said he hoped the team's March Madness run will have a ripple effect throughout southwestern Louisiana.
One that won't go away when he does.
“This is huge for our school,” he said. “We got freaking $25 million in advertisements in the last couple of weeks. It’s going through the roof."
“This changes our area, our five-parish area,” he said. "It changes everything.”
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